Lily and Kristin don’t quite pass muster as MeToo martyrs
NEIL ARMSTRONG
Lyonesse
Harold Pinter Theatre, London
Until December 23, 2hrs 50mins ★★★☆☆
Clyde’s
Donmar Warehouse, London
Until December 2, 1hr 40mins ★★★★☆
Kate (Lily James) is a 35-year-old film development executive, and Sue (Doon Mackichan), her slightly terrifying boss at a production company, has a great opportunity for her.
An actress who disappeared from the business overnight and who many had thought dead has actually been living in Cornwall for the past 30 years and now wants to tell her story and turn it into a film. Sue, who is all about getting female talent ‘to create female-driven stories which will change the world’, is particularly excited because there’s a ‘MeToo’ element.
Kate is dispatched to visit Elaine (Kristin Scott Thomas) at her crumbling mansion by the sea, named Lyonesse after the mythical Cornish land that sank beneath the waves, and assess whether her story would make a movie.
Elaine’s first appearance, in a swimming costume – she swims in the sea every day – wellies, fur coat and carrying an axe, confirms her eccentricity. She seems to live in a sort of fantasy world, feeding her stuffed birds and dreaming of a big comeback. There are definite shades of Sunset Boulevard’s Norma Desmond. But Elaine’s story of what happened to her, involving a controlling, abusive director who was her lover, resonates with the younger woman whose own husband is a director and whose marriage is going through a rough patch. So Kate is on board and wants to get the film made as Elaine envisages, but the patriarchy might have other ideas.
This has big starry names and the playwright, Penelope Skinner, has just had a TV success with The Following Events Are Based On A Pack Of Lies. However, although it is intriguing and will certainly set people talking, Lyonesse only really manages to tread water. The two principal characters are flat: Elaine is weird; Kate a bit wet. Perhaps consequently, the performances are somewhat one-note. The secondary characters – Elaine’s lesbian poet pal Chris (Sara Powell), Kate’s selfish husband Greg (James Corrigan), and Sue, the hard-nosed boss who talks the talk about female empowerment but doesn’t necessarily walk the walk – are actually more interesting.
It has funny lines. ‘Can’t really live every day like it’s your last,’ says Chris. ‘You’d never change your knickers.’ And there are funny scenes – Elaine, Kate and Chris having a wild celebratory dance is a highlight. Unfortunately that comedy never gels with the critique of oppressive sexism that the play also presents.
Comedy and social critique are also the ingredients in Clyde’s, here blended much more successfully.
Letitia (Ronke Adekoluejo), Rafael (Sebastian Orozco) and Montrellous (Giles Terera) are former prison inmates who work in the kitchen of a truck stop diner in Pennsylvania where they make sandwiches. But these aren’t just any sandwiches – these are Clyde’s sandwiches; the Sistine Chapel ceiling of sandwiches.
Montrellous, the philosopher-king of the kitchen – ‘like the Buddha if he’d grown up in the hood’ – has instilled in his co-workers a desire to create perfection.
They play a game of devising fantasy sandwiches: a tuna melt with chopped lemongrass and basil on toasted black rye; barbecue pork, diced sweet potatoes, a sprinkle of lime, horseradish on a crisp baguette. This is a play that will make you very hungry.
Clyde (Gbemisola Ikumelo) herself, the proprietor, is a bully and a joy-vacuum. She rules with a rod of iron, delighting in making her employees’ lives hell. Indeed, there are hints that she might not even be entirely human: no one has ever seen her eat, she can’t bear to see anyone smile and she’s referred to as a ‘demon’.
She’s just hired a new boy, but how will Jason (Patrick Gibson – who played the same character in Lynn Nottage’s earlier play, Sweat), with his racist facial tattoos, fit in to this racially diverse workplace? Can they all work together towards some sort of redemption?
Clyde’s is absolutely packed with belly laughs, thanks partly to Nottage’s script and partly to the physicality of the performances – especially Adekoluejo’s. And – the relish in the sandwich – it offers an uplifting message of hope. A show to be savoured. Delicious.