Two Women
“Your
father is a scummy, devious, violent bastard, but he’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
This early line neatly summarises the flavour of the play adapted by Patrick
Prior from Martina Cole’s novel of the same name. The world we inhabit in this two-hour dramatisation of a
600-page blockbuster is one where it is almost routine for fathers to rape
their teenage daughters and to beat and betray their wives without batting an
eyelid.
Two
Women was originally based on the fact that in one week in the 1990s,
two women from very different backgrounds were on trial for murdering their
husbands. So, essentially, this is
a story about injustice and the class divide. The two female murderers in this play are downtrodden but
resilient Susan (Cathy Murphy), who has apparently bludgeoned her husband to
death with a hammer after years of abuse, and condescending, middle-class Matty
(Laura Howard), who knifed her husband because he was too boring and
supposedly liked sex toys. Matty
is about to be released on appeal, having benefited from the services of top
barrister Geraldine (Frances Albery).
It doesn’t take a genius to see which way the dice are loaded.
The
most interesting relationships, dramatically speaking, are those between Susan
and her husband’s mistress, Roselle (Sally Oliver), who becomes Susan’s true
friend and champion, and Susan and her shallow, catty mother (Victoria
Alcock), who connives in Susan’s abuse with her silence. Here one begins to sense a drama that
reaches beyond the tub-thumping approach of woman as victim, but this is swept
aside in the build-up to Susan’s appeal and whether she will finally get
justice. She does, and it’s hardly
climactic. The argument has been
too one-sided, and the lawyers too unconvincing, to generate any real
tension.
Murphy
makes Susan stoical and heroic without ever quite touching the heart; Marc
Bannerman ventures terrifyingly into all kinds of dark places as her monster
of a husband, Barry; and Michael Bertenshaw as her father seems too
lightweight and jittery to be an East End thug.
Director
Ryan Romain brings out all the raw pain of Susan’s predicament and
choreographs the multiplicity of scenes with precision, but this is an evening
that cold-shoulders all notion of subtlety and leaves one wondering – as did an
audience member in the Q&A afterwards – whether Martina Cole would ever
consider writing a central male character with any positive qualities at all.
– Giles
Cole
