The Country Girls
by Edna O’Brien
Directed by Lisa Blair
Designed by Richard Kent
Music by Isobel Waller-Bridge
Minerva Theatre
Chichester Festival Theatre
Wednesday 21st June 2017
CAST
Grace Molony – Kate (Caithleen)
Genevieve Hulme-Beaman – Baba
L to R: Kate (Grace Molony) and Baba (Genevieve Hulme-Beaman)
with
Romayne Andrews – Callum
Rachel Atkins – Joanna / Sister Immaculata
Tom Canton – Finn
Chris Garner- Hugo Brennan
Colm Gormely – Malachi
Melanie McHugh – Martha Brennan
Keshina Misha – Singing Woman / Violin player
Bailey Patrick- Hickey
Valery Schatz – Mr Gentleman
Jade Yourell – Sister Mary
It’s the play of the book, but adapted by the original author, Edna O’Brien. It’s also a new play, premiered at Chichester.
The book caused such a furore in Ireland in 1960, getting banned and burned in public. The revelations about Catholic education and general sexism and mysogony in Ireland since then leaves it looking quite mild and restrained, apart from the flogging. The 50s and 60s on stage are fascinating to those of us who remember them. Just the costumes (very good here) are a source of fascination. Twenty years ago, I used to notice the older audiences being equally fascinated by the 30s and 40s on stage. It’s in the detail … the two girls of the title, Kate and Baba have to go from early teen to young women, doing many of the costume changes on stage, in beautifully choreographed moves, where other characters sweep by, and deposit fresh clothes or pick up discarded ones. At the beginning of Act 2, they’re in the same clothes as the end of Act One, but have added lipstick and stockings with seams. That was a detail I heard people talking about at the end.
The young Cathleen (Grace Molony) with Hickey (Bailey Patrick) back in rural Ireland
The cast list only suggests some of the roles. The two girls Caithleen (aka Kate) and Baba, played by Grace Molony and Genevieve Hulme-Beaman, stay in character throughout. Everyone else has multiple roles. The two heroines are perfectly cast physically (as well as on ability), Kathleen is thin, gawky, the innocent pulled along. She would be the author’s alta-ego. Baba (Barbara) is the feisty, cheeky, daring and sexy one, pulling her friend into trouble. They age from kids to young women seamlessly. There are lovely moments, such as Cathleen trying on her first pair of red high heeled shoes. Grace Molony brilliantly conveys awkward, skinny, early teen emerging from the chrysalis into an elegant young woman.
Genevieve Hulme-Beaman has the fun part and carries most of the comedy. We saw her last year in The Taming Of The Shrew at The Globe. She was cast as Bianca for the run, but early on, when I saw it, she had stepped up as understudy and was playing the lead, Katherine. She reverted to Bianca later, because they needed a lead singer in the role, but we thought her a brilliant, feisty and very funny Katherine. As she is as Baba.
Baba (Genevieve Hulme-Beaman) gets a free choice ice by pouting seductively. Cathleen (Grace Molony) looks on.
The story takes Caithleen from the death of her mother, drowned while fleeing a beating from her drunken father. Then she’s at convent school, with her friend Baba. The nuns are vicious … she has her mother’s photo confiscated. She is befriended by a novice, but the brutal regime of the school bears down on them after a scurrilous verse written by Baba is found. They’re beaten and expelled, and go off to Dublin. They live with a sweet elderly Jewish couple. Baba is after the fast life with ageing local “spivs.” Caithleen is pursued by an older married man from her village, the oddly named Mr Gentleman. She agrees to go off to Vienna with him for a few days (borrowing a nightie from her landlady), but he betrays her, staying with his wife. Caithleen is drenched in a rainstorm … the Minerva Theatre is very fond of its fine rain machine and uses it often. She is rescued by The Poet who takes her home. Mr Gentleman arrives to apologise, but Kate is off to LONDON!
The convent school . Cathleen is persuaded to sign a piece of paper by Baba (it’s the incriminating rude verse)
The sweep of the story propels us through the many scenes, which flow on from each other, in an almost Brechtian style. There are no breaks. The result is that the two girls are the full technicolour characters, and everyone else is somewhat monochrome. The men in particular, in a reverse of the normal theatrical order, are mainly stereotypes, but then so is the Jewish landlady, and the chief nun. I once read the book, but it was many years ago.
Mr Gentleman is an odd character. He’s married, older, but says right at the beginning to the child Kate that “you have me” when she says she has no one in the world. I spent the first half perplexed by this guy with a vaguely German accent in rural Western Ireland. In part two, Kate mentions that he is descended from French-Huegenots, making me wonder why he has a German accent, then he is apparently Austrian as are the Jewish couple. Then a review describes him as a French solicitor and another mentions his French accent. I’d initially guessed he was Dutch, so there you go. The actor is in fact French, but it is an accent I have heard from people who speak English so well that they have lost their original accent and become undefinable generic European rather than British sounding.. I suppose he’s based on a real character. Daft name … it makes you think everyone is going to get allegorical names.
I assumed the book was broadly autobiographical, and therefore the play would be too. It’s not that close … O’Brien was born in 1930, and these young girls in the play are definitely late 1950s. Maybe it was just time-switched a little. She also had got married before she herself moved to London in 1954. Whatever, the story was enormously influential and groundbreaking in Ireland and in Irish literature, focussing on women’s experience and sex. When I mentioned that the men were stereotypical predatory sexist pigs, I was told, ‘Same in England. That’s just how older men were in the 1950s and 1960s at work. All of them.”
There’s a lot of singing … mainly just snatches, and Irish traditional songs, though the girls do a fine “I’ll Tell Me Ma” an old favourite.
The strong points were the fluid direction, the terrific and totally believable performance of the two central figures. Excellent lighting plot and set with its moss-on-bog floor. Weaker points? The basic storyline has lost some of its impact due to later even more-damning works on 1950s Ireland, and it seems somewhat slight as a tale nowadays. It relies on period nostalgia. I also think the rapid flow between scenes means we rarely get deeper into issues, making it a tad choppy. I suspect that seeing the sublime The Ferryman set in rural Ireland so recently throws it into a poor relative position in comparison. That’s possibly because Jez Butterworth is first and foremost a playwright creating a story for the stage, and Edna O’Brien a novelist revealing her intimate thoughts through her descriptive genius.
Overall: ***
WHAT THE CRITICS SAID:
4
Susannah Clapp, Observer ****
Anna Treneman, The Times, ****
3
Michael Billington, The Guardian ***
Claire Allfree, The Telegraph, ***
Jane Edwardes, Sunday Times, ***
LISA BLAIR
The Hypochondriac, Bath 2014
GENEVIEVE HULME-BEAMAN
The Taming of The Shrew, Globe 2016 (Katherine, then Bianca)
COLM GORMLEY
The Taming of The Shrew, Globe 2016 (Hortensio)
ROMAYNE ANDREWS
Hamlet, RSC 2016 (Osric)