Lipman brings pluck and charm to this one-woman odyssey
Theatre Rose Hope Mill Theatre, Manchester ★★★★★
‘Glory be to God for dazzling things of four score or more. I’m referring to those feisty elderly women of 80-plus who… get about as much attention from the media and the politicians as a polling day station in Penge on European election day.”
So, with typical comic élan, wrote Maureen Lipman in her memoir Past-it
Notes. Lipman, who seems to have been a national treasure all my adult days, plays sharp-tongued septuagenarian Evelyn Plummer on Coronation Street. But in Martin Sherman’s monologue
Rose, recorded at the very fine, currently closed Hope Mill Theatre in Manchester as a fundraising exercise, she gives us a woman of 80 who in fact redefines the word “feisty”.
The American playwright – still with us (at 81) – remains best known for his portrayal of the Nazi persecution of gay men in the 1979 play Bent. With Rose, he considered a whole lifespan, encapsulating a vast array of experience in one Jewish survivor: witnessing her first pogrom as a child, later one of the few to narrowly make it out of the Warsaw Ghetto.
In London at the National, then on Broadway, Olympia Dukakis first undertook the feat of garrulous memory and trial of physical stamina,
even though our heroine is markedly sedentary, engaged in the mourning act of “sitting shiva” (it later becomes clear for whom). Despite the new recording allowing for edits, it’s clear that Lipman is on top of the material. And although there’s a marginal awkwardness to this lone, weary figure addressing an empty auditorium the peculiarity heightens the sense that this speech-act serves as a lasting historical document.
There’s an issue with the two-hour length – without the enveloping presence of an auditorium, your mind is likely to wander. That amused twinkle Lipman brings to almost everything she does can’t undermine
There’s a sense that this speech-act serves as a historical document
the seriousness of what she’s saying at pivotal moments – and her eyes fill as often with tears as with faraway looks. But our prior knowledge of the actress’s own comic good sense makes the lapses in Sherman’s judgment more striking.
There are a few neat wisecracks – “If ever a people were not built for bathing suits it was ours!” runs a typical aside. But his script generally strains hard for passing entertainment value. Still, the litmus (or Lipman) test is: would you pay under a tenner for the privilege of renting this? I would.
Until tomorrow. Tickets: hopemilltheatre.co.uk