Ivy & Joan

Synopsis

Two One-Act Plays By James Hogan Late in life two women start new lives and leave home. But where is home? Did they ever really have one? IVY is a barmaid, forced to retire. She has worked and lived in the same hotel for 40 years. It has been her only home, but why for so long? She has wasted all these years waiting for a lover to return and claim her. Putting on a brave face, she spends her last few minutes in employment offering wise counsel in the staff room. No one is listening. JOAN has been to Venice with her husband. A Sunday painter, drawn by the splendour of Venetian art, she hopes for inspiration. But a joyous wedding procession in St Mark's Square reminds her of what is really missing in her life, a true soul mate. How can she ever find one now? Two intimate, funny and heartbreaking tales of loss.

Our Review:

Michael Coveney - 16 January 2013

Publisher turns playwright. Is that the same as gamekeeper turns poacher? Anyway, James Hogan of Oberon Books has written a deft little double-bill in which Lynne Miller, WPC Cathy Marshall in The Bill, plays Ivy, a hotel barmaid leaving her job, and Joan, a Sunday painter, leaving Venice for a psychiatric hospital back home.

In both instances, the Alan Bennett-style talking head - a slightly embittered Lancashire pseudo-snob (the hotel pianist’s not a patch on Russ Conway), and a disappointed artistic wife in a dead marriage - has a suitcase packed, ready to go, and a cowed male companion.

Steven Beard - neat, dapper, discreet - plays both foils, doing some excellent listening and looking out of windows. In the first, he's a hotel employee studying the racing form while Ivy witters on about the young "tart" who's replaced her in the cocktail bar; in the second, a long-suffering spouse and unemployed church warden who ...

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