We meet the
four at work, sharing gossip and banter as they work towards their daily target
of 1,000 crates of prepared and packed fish. Jan (Tanya-Loretta Dee) is a
devoted single mum who has spent the past fourteen years bringing up her
daughter Claire alone, but is about to lose her to Leicester University. Linda
(Jo Patmore) is quiet and shy, and obsessed with the singer Tony Christie. Her
direct opposite in personality is the feisty, brash Shelley (Annie Kirkman)
whose dream is the celebrity high life which she will achieve by “bagging a
millionaire”. Finally there is Pearl (Kate Wood) who, at 55, is soon to leave
the plant in order to spend more time with her husband who is about to retire.
The three
younger women want to organise a send-off for Pearl, and when she drops into
the conversation that her dream is to attend Ladies’ Day at Royal Ascot, it’s
sorted. Or not: there are a few hurdles (good horse racing pun there!) to get
over before they can go. First is getting the day off work and thankfully
supervisor Joe (Gareth Cassidy, with Humberside accent) is celebrating some
good news of his own and so is happy to get agency cover in for the day. The
next, more difficult obstacle in their way, is the fact that tickets sold out
months ago. Undaunted, they set out anyway.
The
transformation of the stage from a fish packing plant to a racecourse, and of
four overalled women into racegoers dressed up to the nines, is one of those
remarkable tricks of theatre which make the experience so magical and takes
place seamlessly thanks to the clever set and costume design of Jess Curtis and
the joyful choreography of Sundeep Saini.
The ladies
can’t afford to buy tickets from tout Fred (Cassidy, with Geordie accent) but
Linda has a stroke of luck when she finds four tickets. There’s a moral dilemma
here – the tickets should have been returned to their rightful owner, but this
would have been a short play if that had happened!
Once inside,
the ladies have fun drinking champagne, learning the bookies’ tic-tac sign
language from TV pundit Jim (Cassidy, with “BBC” accent) and placing a bet on
the Tote with potentially life-changing winnings if all six chosen horses win.
They learn
about the darker side of the racing world too, meeting Patrick (Cassidy, with
unconvincing Liverpool accent) who got carried away following a winning streak
and is now penniless, lacking even the means to get a bus home. Separated from
the gang and lost, Linda wanders into the jockeys’ changing room where Kevin
(Cassidy, with rural Irish accent) tells her how hard a jockey’s life is,
practically starving in order to keep to weight whilst working gruelling hours
and driving vast distances between race meetings. Shelley sees the sleazy side
of the showbiz world when Jim makes a sordid suggestion.
Meanwhile, the
alcohol is taking its toll and secrets are starting to emerge. Pearl in
particular has a dark secret which turns out to be what motivated her to come
to Ladies’ Day. Although done with a light and humorous touch, this is actually
quite a deep examination of close female friendship and the effect that sudden revelations
can have upon it.
Will the
fractures in the friendship prove to be terminal? Does the ladies’ bet come up?
How will they all get along when the magical transformation is reversed and
they find themselves back in the fish factory? Why not buy a ticket and find
out…
Ladies’ Day was
set in 2005 and some of the references reflect that – Blair as Prime Minister
for instance, not to mention “a tenner for a bottle of wine” – and yet much of
it could be contemporary. The divide between the women working all hours in an
unsatisfying job but still struggling to make ends meet and the riches of the
“Ascot set” is even bigger nowadays.
The play has
some absolutely joyful moments and one or two very sad ones. The female
characters are believable without crossing the line into stereotypes and we
find ourselves rooting for them, despite their faults. The versatile Cassidy
gives each of his characters a life of his own, with at least nine costume
changes during the play. Under Marieka Audsley’s direction this is a great
production and a superb evening's entertainment and made for a memorable first
theatre visit of 2023 for me.
An
afterthought. Amanda Whittington has written two sequels to Ladies’ Day: Ladies
Down Under (2007) and Ladies Unleashed (2022) – I wonder if there are any plans
to stage these here at the New Vic?
Reviewer - Ian Simpson
on - 7.2.23
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