Generations at brawling point
IN comic/ actress Katy Brand’s first play three generations of females assemble in a posh but anonymous hotel room on the night before a wedding.
Eleanor ( Anita Dobson) is the waspishly elegant, sharp- tongued mother of bride- to- be Suzanne ( Debbie Chazen). Suzanne is everything her mother is not, a sloppy neo- hippy with spiralling debts. She is also a single mother to 18- year- old Laurie ( Maisie Richardson- Sellers) who is cool, digital- savvy and liberated from the constraints of gender identity. Get the picture? Brand’s play is transparently schematic.
As the three generations of women fight and reconcile, exposing buried resentments and thwarted hopes, their maternal feelings ( or lack of them) rise to the surface and blame is apportioned indiscriminately.
Eleanor blames Suzanne for stalling her career by being such a needy child. Suzanne blames her for being a bad mother who drank herself out of a teaching job. Laurie attempts to act as peacemaker but her language and attitudes are often beyond the understanding of the older women.
When Eleanor reveals she’s in the throes of a Shirley Valentine affair and moving to Puglia, the gloves come off. Drink is drunk. Laurie demonstrates the future of the sexless reproductive process with an ice bucket, a champagne flute and an olive.
But when the women have exhausted themselves with fighting, tears and confessions, they bond over a shared hamburger and chips.
The performances outshine the material. Dobson is spectacularly good as Eleanor, delivering her put- downs like velvet- covered barbs. Chazen is convincing as a woman who has lived her entire life in the shadow of her aspirational mother and turned to crystals, tie- dyeing and visualisation for survival.
Richardson- Sellers has the difficult task of making Laurie an actual person as opposed to a set of “yoof” attitudes and she almost succeeds.
Those three stars are for the performances, not for the play. IS IT a reality show? Is it a psychological experiment? No, it’s a job interview.
In fact, Jordi Galceran’s clever play incorporates all these elements as he puts four candidates through a Kafkaesque selection process for a post in a Fortune 500 company. The first trick is that one of the quartet is a plant: an undercover agent from Human Resources.
Is it the arrogant, blustering Frank ( Jonathan Cake) or the nervous, ordinary Rick ( John Gordon Sinclair)? Perhaps it’s the sly and affable Carl ( Greg McHugh) or the smart, cucumber- cool Melanie ( Laura Pitt- Pulford)?
The battleground is the white leather, glass and chrome of a corporate boardroom where the combatants circle each other looking for a weakness and trying to distinguish truth from lies. Mind games and challenges are prompted by cards that appear from a drawer in the wall that opens and closes by itself.
Written in 2003, this Catalan play has been translated into 20 languages and performed in more than 60 countries. The secret of its success is its universality. Everyone has been through the interview process and will recognise the anxiety, competitiveness and fake “may the best man win” bonhomie.
Near the end of a sharp, compact 90 minutes, Galceran accelerates the twists to thriller speed.
The cast is exemplary from Sinclair’s hokey Rick to Laura Pitt- Pulford’s cool professional Melanie who finally resorts to feminine guile, letting down her flame red hair.
With touches of David Mamet’s con artistry and Pinter’s sinister claustrophobia, this is wickedly funny and keeps you guessing until the closing line.
Sharply amusing and a little scary.