This quartet of short plays from Manchester Metropolitan University students, celebrates the centenary of the suffragette movement - with plays written between 1909 tand 2010 exploring women's fight for the vote, the anti-nuclear camp at Greenham Common in the 1980s and the climate change protests of the twenty first century. The choice of plays works well as, despite different tones, their themes dovetail and jigsaw and provide a sweep of the history of necessary struggles that women have endured and fought for the past hundred years.
We start in the present, with Sam Holcroft’s ‘Pink’ – more-or-less a two-hander where a female PM confronts a female porn mogul in a game of one-upmanship, involving threats, blackmail and coercion. This is the strongest, tightest and most layered of the pieces; it is that rare thing, a short play which packs in so much thought-provoking and often discomforting (even for, nay especially for, a feminist) ideologies and opinions that you are forced to confront where you stand on questions such as, is it acceptable for some modern women to exploit each other, even if it is for the greater good of all women? The arguments for and against the sexual exploitation of women and what happens when the political, conversely, becomes a personal, and sexual, jab at the conscience, and makes you want to rush to read the script to formulate exactly where you stand. Becky Bowe and Lucy Greenaway give completely assured and riveting performances as two women under pressure in their respective worlds who clash over, in the first instance, protecting a man.
In a complete change of style and tenor, Cicely Hamilton & Christopher St. John‘s play ‘How The Vote Was Won’ is an ensemble piece, first performed in 1909, which remains one of the most popular and well known suffrage plays. A broad comedy, with some slapstick elements, it’s set in the living room of Horace and Ethel Cole in Brixton on the day of a general women’s strike called by Suffragettes in response to the government declaring that women do not require the vote as they are supported by men. The women subsequently down tools, leave their jobs and homes and foist themselves onto their nearest male relative for support and shelter. As Horace’s female relatives arrive at his house, in quick succession, he is compelled, along with all the other men in London, to demand votes for women, ‘as soon as possible’. The ten-strong cast lend the play whistle-stop energy and the play can be enjoyed as a confection – albeit one which trades in stock characters & stereotypes. The one truth that prevails is that it is often when men pay serious attention to & get on board a women’s cause, that change is affected.
The Apple, by Inez Bensusan, an Australian-born Jewish actor, playwright and suffragette, deals with the age-old and ever-contemporary issue of how economic inequality between the sexes leads to a variety of other unequal consequences, oppression and limited life choices. A family’s fortune is being squandered on the smug, spoilt son, Cyril, the ‘apple’ of his father’s eye, while his sister Ann is running the home for no recompense and his other sister, Helen, has to work as a typist. Helen then becomes the victim of sexual harassment at work & is bent on using her rightful share of the family wealth to go abroad and start a new life.
Although over a century old, the play has a shockingly modern heroine in the vocal and outraged Helen, who demands “a glimpse of life, a taste of the joy of living, a few pence in my pocket, my rights as an individual”. Played with vivacity, ferocity and pathos by Ellis Konstantina, Helen achieves almost a tragic status and you’re rooting for her throughout.
Finally, Bloody Wimmin by Lucy Kirkwood looks back at how the Greenham Common women developed their peace camp and what impact the camp has had on today’s society. Kirkwood pokes fun at the stereotypical hippy-dippy types that the media presented as populating the camp, which sat uneasily with me as a source of cheap laughs. Helen (Daisy Farrington), an expectant mum, joins the camp against the wishes of her husband Bob (Paul Dorsey) and their arguments exemplify poles apart views of the sexes on female empowerment. The action moves to a modern-day climate change protest camp, ringing some changes but essentially showing how not much has changed for women – and men – but that political engagement is still a way for women and the men in their lives to grow, change and become educated & empowered, even if some difficult choices have to be made along the way: as one character ruefully opines, “It’s very easy to laugh at passion”.
The students of MMU deserve a huge pat on the back, playing multiple parts and sustaining energetic and compelling performances over two hours, in well-selected, intellectually engaging works. We’re going to see many of this bunch on TV screens & in bigger venues in future.
Reviewer - Tracy Ryan
on - 4/5/19
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