Tasty comedy of lesbian manners

A LUDICROUS plot and over-the-top acting underscore the playfulness of this comedy while suggesting that one should not take oneself too seriously; but before dismissing it as a lightweight piece, it should be remembered that there is some truth in the precept that “he who lives without folly is not as wise as he imagines”. Under the surface tonguein-cheek melodrama are the edifying themes of courage, honesty and selfacceptance.

In mid-20th century America, no female with aspirations to a social life would admit to being lesbian, so when the ladies of the Susan B Anthony Society for the Sisters of Gertrude Stein convene to celebrate the Quiche of 1956 (an annual festivity), the five women participating in the ceremony claim to be widows to explain their single status.

The venue is a community centre cluttered with 1950s domestic appliances to suggest the proper domain of womanhood, while an obsession with the nuclear threat of the then Cold War is exemplified by an alarm in the wall.

The Sisters are dressed in the full-skirted fashion of that age, and excruciatingly genteel.

Enter the Quiche of the Year, a concoction involving spinach, asparagus, eggs and no meat; these women are appalled by carnivorous practices but besotted with eggs, and are extremely earnest

But then the alarm signals a nuclear scare, the doors are sealed, and the quintet is trapped without access to eggs for the next four years.

Ridiculous? Certainly, but this crisis conduces to admitting truths that would otherwise remain buried beneath stifling layers of convention, and as each woman emerges from her closet in a halo of self-discovery.

Ensemble is paramount and well handled, with notable portrayals from Stanley, as the portly Ginny on sufferance in the sisterhood, and Malan as Lulie, the society’s president with something to hide.

By the end of the show we feel that here are five women whose reaction to the unexpected is instructive and entertaining – in the tradition of all good theatre.