(Left to right) Elizabeth Boag, Anna Fordham and Anna Odeke in Nuffield Southampton Theatres’ production of Women in Power. Picture: The Other Richard
Women in Power continues at NST City, Southampton until 29 September 2018.
Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩
Southampton’s new theatre NST City opened earlier this year with director Sam Hodges at the helm. The theatre is well-equipped, with a spacious foyer and bar area, and has good access. The night I visited, it was packed with students. Being in the centre of this university city I imagine it will offer a programme targeting this group in particular.
Women in Power, an adaptation of the Ancient Greek play by Aristophanes, The Assembly Women, has been written by a group of women: Wendy Cope, Jenny Eclair, Suhayala El-Bushra, Natalie Haynes, Shappi Khorsandi, Jess Phillips MP and Brona C Titley.
Having such a large group of playwrights may explain the sketch show feel of the play. Even the set is a mishmash of statues and objects from across the ages, and the variety of props including a wheelbarrow, welly boots, and kitchen gadgets.
The whole play is a high-speed, colourful, rather chaotic comedy play with songs, rather than a musical, and it is amusing, with several laugh-out-loud moments.
The six likeable performers – Lydia Rose Bewley, Elizabeth Boag, Anna Fordham, Lisa Kerr, Alicia McKenzie and Anne Odeke – are full of energy and gusto, playing a range of characters. I imagine rehearsals were great fun. Directed by Blanche McIntyre with music by Tim Sutton, designed by Jasmine Swan, with lighting design by Katharine Williams and choreography by Elizabeth Boag, Women in Power has the feel of a hen night.
Being based on the Greek play, it is rude and raucous, with plenty of willy gags, scatological humour (pooing onstage – that’s a new one for me) and sex references. Very traditionally lad humour.
In the original, male actors would have played the women, who masquerade as men in order to vote for women to take over the running of Athens. Here, the women are playing men playing women playing men… oh, you get the idea. Although the original was a comedy because it turned the ‘natural order’ on its head, it does actually ask a few serious questions about the philosophy of politics and society.
In this version, the laughs come from switching this around and apeing men, in pantomime style. It too asks questions about ownership, equality, work, society, and hierarchy, in a light-hearted way.
The songs (I particularly like the ballad to a sieve, about our love of possessions) are strong and well sung. The whole show rattles along at a lick, with a great deal of physicality, but sometimes there are long pauses, I’m not sure why, which are a bit incongruent.
It feels like a festival show, something for the Inbetweeners generation, and as such it works well. The audience is welcomed in, and no one takes themselves seriously, despite the underlying serious message about equality.
Worth a visit if you don’t want to stay out too late, and you like your plays fast and funny.
Kat Wootton
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