Review: The Stepmother (Chichester Festival Theatre)

It seems astonishing that The Stepmother has languished unperformed and quite forgotten for nearly a century. Githa Sowerby’s play, although written at a time when women had little financial independence, still has some uncomfortable resonances today. And her depiction of how seemingly stable and respectable businesses can be built on an edifice of debt and deceit has some stark parallels with the collapse of Enron and the Robert Maxwell empire.

But it’s the "massive injustice" done to women that fired up director Richard Eyre. That, and the possibility of reviving another forgotten masterpiece, as he already had done with the same author’s Rutherford and Son. The story of how Lois is exploited and betrayed by her husband sometimes makes uncomfortable viewing but Eyre’s assured production ensures that it’s always compelling.

Key to this is Will Keen’s performance as the manipulative and scheming Eustace, Lois’ husband. It’s an astonishingly unsympathetic role: a pathetic, venal bully and it would be easy to make him a stereotypical pantomime villain. But Keen’s performance, all smirks, giggles and smiles gives us a man whose stock-in-trade is emotional blackmail, whose whining voice hides his own inadequacies and who presents himself as victim, even when all his deceit is laid bare.

It’s an astonishing performance and while it’s the centrepiece of the production, Ophelia Lovibond‘s Lois, the eponymous stepmother, is a powerful counterpoint. She visibly grows from a shy teenager to a successful business woman and family head.

There are strong performances too from Eve Ponsonby as Monica, the step daughter growing up all too quickly, Simon Chandler as the upright solicitor who sees through Eustace’s misdeeds and Joanna David as a befuddled matriarch.

If there’s a downside it’s that Sowerby is infuriatingly vague on some of the financial details. How does Eustace lose so much money? Would a woman of Lois’ undoubted business sense and financial acumen be quite so uninterested in the state of her own finances? What comes out strongly is the burning anger as to how women are held back when it comes to economic power, an anger that still carries on until this day.

The Stepmother runs at Chichester Festival Theatre until 9 September.