Writer: Grace Chapman
Director: Yasmeen Arden
Grace Chapman, writer of May Day, Fizzy Sherbet’s latest offering, thought it would be ‘wonderfu’l to have ‘slightly older women’ who ‘talk dirty to each other’. Listeners to her play about two women in their fifties may wonder what she means. Is it the anatomical list at the beginning where the rudest word is ‘foreskin’?
Or when housewife Helen talks in Mamma Mia style ‘dot dot dots? Or when her friend Diana pronounces ‘Bottom’ with a salacious magnificence that even a two-year-old would find hard to beat? But this is a generation who grew up reading their mother’s Cosmopolitan, understanding Sex and the City and finding the illustrations in The Joy of Sex laughably quaint. They know filth.
It is true that there are disproportionately few good acting roles for older women, but it is also true that age is a condition it is hard to imagine until you get there. Chapman, who is 34, wanted to avoid the stereotyping of older women as ‘doddery old grannies’ – she may not have seen shows like Call the Midwife or Killing Eve – but she still draws on standard images.
The newly adventurous Diana is naively delighted by her experience of a Berlin night club – having improbably ‘popped out for some milk’ in her dressing-gown. Her friend Helen indulges in those typical old-person pursuits – baking, gardening and the wearing of beige. Chapman has written Helen’s husband to sound ‘pretty awful’. He makes only a brief appearance but it’s enough to suggest he may in fact be pretty depressed. A younger generation is rather inaccurately represented as well. Helen’s son Charlie is conveniently out of the house because he’s gone to get his A-Level results. Yet the year is at least 2019, and the two friends are using devices with screens to talk. Charlie would have had his results online hours before Diana woke up in Berlin ‘very naked’ with more than a hangover.
The director Yasmeen Arden says she was drawn to the play by its warmth, and speaks of the enviably congenial atmosphere in rehearsals with Chapman and the two actors, Tanya-Loretta Dee and Lucille Findlay. (It is not clear who plays which part, but fortunately both have the range to express many different emotions in a matter of six minutes). At first the voices seem exaggerated – Diana too excited and Helen too dull, but in the course of the play different, more authentic voices emerge.
Chapman’s strength as a writer lies in phrases with several layers of meaning. The title might refer to the day the women met as students, or it might be a cry for help. One of the many stand-out lines is Helen’s:’ You should have asked my permission’. Arden allows just enough of a pause – not even a second – for the audience to wonder whether Helen is referring to the use of a photograph, or to the surprising story Diana has just told her. Diana has a problem which will not improve with age. With admirable economy, it is only mentioned twice, but it is a potent symbol of the need to seize opportunity when you can.
This idea is endorsed by this episode’s guest, Carren Strock, who can only be described as pan-accomplished. Here, as the author of Married Women Who Love Women, she is an ideal person to talk about May Day. She points out another double-layered line – when Diana says, of Helen’s family ‘I hope they know how lucky they are’. She does make some wild generalisations. Perhaps it is true that ‘every girl’s first love is another woman’ – but does that definitely mean -as cheerily sung in the film Pride (where it is also disputed) that Every Woman is a Lesbian at Heart? However, Strock brings maturity as well as warmth, and her approval of the play counts for a great deal.
Runs here
