Theatre reviews: The Girls Of Slender Means | Little Gem | Been So Long

Published on Thursday 13 August 2009 19:07

THE GIRLS OF SLENDER MEANS **** ASSEMBLY@GEORGE STREET (VENUE 3) LITTLE GEM **** TRAVERSE THEATRE (VENUE 15) BEEN SO LONG **** TRAVERSE THEATRE (VENUE 15)

WITH Nic Green's great neo-feminist show Trilogy, from the Arches in Glasgow, powering away every evening at St Stephen's – and famously celebrating the naked female body in all its glorious real-life variety – there was never going to be any shortage of debate, on this year's Fringe, about the many different meanings of women's liberation. And although explicit political debate of the kind Green embraces is relatively rare, there are plenty of shows around which demonstrate just how radical it can be simply to create strong female characters, and to let them tell their experience as it is, without simpering or self-censorship.

The great Scottish novelist Muriel Spark, for example, was no-one's idea of a conventional feminist; and yet because so much of her work places strong, autonomous female characters in the foreground, her very presence changes the terms of the debate. Her magnificent 1963 novel The Girls Of Slender Means is set during the last months of the Second World War in the May Of Teck Club, a Knightsbridge hostel for well-bred girls of limited means living and working away from their families; and now, Scotland's leading women's theatre company Stellar Quines has succeeded in bringing together a fascinating first-ever stage version of the story, featuring a cast of 12 in a strong and thought-provoking adaptation by Judith Adams.

It should be said right away that The Girls Of Slender Means is a complex, demanding show, with a time-scheme that switches often and unpredictably between the main action of the story, and an elegiac postwar moment that sets it in a strange, perspective-shifting context. Natasha Chivers' set of shifting screens is the kind that blurs and suggests rather than clarifies. And Philip Pinsky's fine music and Janice Parker's witty choreography often capture the nervous gaiety of these last months of the war, haunted by the sudden impacts of flying V-bombs; but never offer the audience an easy emotional narrative.

What emerges, though, is a powerful and gripping contribution to this year's coming Festival debate on the idea of enlightenment, and its relationship to faith; a story of a group of young women caught at the end of the conflict that shaped our rational and individualistic modern world, but also confronted by mysteries of life and sudden death, of belief and self-sacrifice, to which that world will have few answers. And by refracting that story through the lives of women – and through their influence on the life of one man – Spark makes it clear that, for her at least, women are always moral and spiritual actors on a par with men; not mere decoration or refuge, or background figures to the business of life.

Elaine Murphy's richly entertaining and accomplished debut play Little Gem, playing at the Traverse, also places women firmly in the foreground; and if its stance is a shade more predictable than Muriel Spark's, it still creates three characters to remember and cherish.

Little Gem is a triple monologue of the kind in which Irish theatre excels; and it tells the story of a critical year in the lives of Kay, Lorraine and Amber, three generations of the same Dublin family, as they stand on the brink of widowhood for Kay, new love for Lorraine, and teenage motherhood for Amber.

On one hand, these are ordinary heterosexual women, all three of their lives shaped by their relationships with men. What's clear, though, is that they are no longer waiting around to be told by men what it is they should want, or how they should express those desires. Some of this is standard soap-opera stuff for an age in which women increasingly have to "do it for themselves"; but Murphy delivers it with terrific conviction, and three stunning performances from Sarah Greene as Amber, Hilda Fay as Lorraine, and the wonderful Anita Reeves as Kay.

On the face of things, the two gorgeous women in Che Walker's sharp, sassy musical Been So Long, playing at the Traverse after a successful run in London, look far more like a standard male fantasy made flesh. Tall, beautiful, glamorous and black, Simone and Yvonne – heroine and sidekick – give it hell with the high heels and short, short skirts; but exactly like the women in Elaine Murphy's play, they are out to get what they want, rather than what some man – or some media-driven sexual culture – tells them they should like.

Set in the closing days of a once-popular London bar with a fabulous soul-music tradition, Been So Long is an upfront popular comedy about love, sex and romance on the mean streets of London, backed by a rich strand of live music from a four-piece band and three fabulous Motown-style backing singers. But in the end, it's the style and soul of Cat Simmons's Simone and Naana Agyei-Ampadu's Yvonne that I will remember, as they try to navigate their way among the sharks and seducers on the streets towards something like dignity, and true love.

The Girls Of Slender Means until 31 August; today 2:50pm.

Little Gem until 30 August; today 5pm.

Been So Long until 30 August; today 3:45pm.