Writer: Eilís Mulholland
Directors: Marley Craze and Natasha Jobst
It’s a wintry night in the late 1980s, and young Jane arrives at a rural inn. It’s run by a strange group of women, who appear to belong to different time zones dress-wise, but all have ’80s hair and love Madonna. There’s Wapping-born Edwardian Betty (lively Marley Craze), alternately flirtatious and fiery. And there’s old Meg (writer Eilís Mulholland), who smokes, reads Jilly Cooper, and speaks mostly in cryptic prophecy. Cara Dougherty plays Jane as awkwardly determined and purposeful with a northern accent and an unnerving ability to roll her eyes up into her head. Chloe Stokes is Althea, the languidly elegant owner with supernatural qualities, whose 1920s drapery and sparkle are gradually stripped back to a thin cotton shift with ragged edges.
With corsets of coral and scarlet, tattered lace, and striped-silk bustles, the layered costumes are one of the most striking features of Meadow Report’s intriguing show, The Boline Inn. Hannah Wickham’s flamboyant, innovative designs, made from recycled fabrics, mix peak ’80s Madonna with elements of fashion through the centuries, like Meg’s dark-silk Victorian dress and Betty’s ruched bodice. Jane wears a peekaboo denim pinafore paired with leopard prints, badges and a Walkman.
These pieced-together outfits, with their patched panels, beribboned tops and tartan inserts, fit well with a script that feels slightly cobbled together from fragments of stories and folk songs, arboreal metaphors, and Madonna hits. A smattering of comedy, particularly in Jane’s early reactions, saves the show from taking itself too seriously. The faux-historical speeches (“Jane be her name”) are not very convincingly scripted, but delivered with passion and panache.
Jane is looking for her uncle, last seen at the Boline Inn. The women seem to know something about him, but Jane stays several days without learning much more about his whereabouts. This makes for a frustratingly halting narrative. The talented ensemble frequently breaks into tuneful songs, dances, or sequences of ritualised movement.
Some scenes take place in a forest, represented by a painted curtain drawn across the stage. The interior set is full of details: lanterns on hooks and cups on dressers, pot plants on a ladder and a cosy-looking armchair. “Nice, rustic, bohemian. As I walk, I’m distracted by objects of unique personality,” says Jane into her Dictaphone when she arrives at the inn. Laurel Marks’s lighting design is suitably dramatic, and Joseph Staines’s impressive soundscape includes plenty of unsettling noises: thunder and pouring rain, humming, growling, whispers and overlapping voices.
Grace Mia Harvey, who is spirited as boiler-suit-wearing Val, doubles as the company’s movement director. Natasha Jobst, engaging and versatile as a medieval Scottish cook called Caroline, co-directs with Marley Craze. Caroline innocently remarks that Val is “still sour from all the rapes and pillaging”. Underlying themes link the characters: violence against women, the power of sisterhood, and an ancient connection with trees. These women from different eras encounter versions of the same age-old oppression and draw strength from the same timeless sources.
Most members of this all-female theatre group, Meadow Report, recently trained together at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts. It would be great to see the same promising cast take on a more coherent script and tighter direction. This is their first show in London and is unlikely to be their last.
Runs until 13 December 2025
