Blue Stockings

Blue Stockings
By Jessica Swale. Heidelberg Theatre Company. 7 – 22 September 2018.

Cambridge University, 1896.  Women are permitted to attend, they can pass their courses, but they cannot graduate, no matter how brilliant or, at the very least, as equally brilliant as the male undergraduates.  They struggle for their rights against prejudice, condescension, virulent misogyny and sheer gobsmacking nonsense - such as the claim that if women overtax their brains, it will affect their ‘vital organs’.  The play covers a year in the lives of four highly talented, committed women, each prepared – as if it’s an either/or choice – to sacrifice motherhood and ‘reputation’ as anything but a ‘blue stocking’.  That’s the put-down term for any educated and ‘opinionated’ woman.  Such is the subject matter of Jessica Swale’s play (her first), a hugely ambitious project in both the writing and production.  Director Natasha Boyd attacks this big task with confidence, invention and aplomb.

In this production, 19 actors (too many to name here) play 30 characters, and with such a large cast there’s not just the issue of moving them about efficiently – and eight of them doubling – there also the challenge of their impersonating educated, mostly middle-class English characters.  While some do this spiritedly and convincingly, others show the strain, which can drag down the pace, emphasising the sometimes plodding, tick-the-boxes nature of the text. 

While it does communicate the young women’s curiosity, ambition and excitement at learning, and the mean and stubborn obstacles in their way, the play is, I’m afraid, a bit plodding or plonking.  It dutifully incorporates no doubt meticulous research, but it’s often ‘on the nose’, as well as sometimes telling us what we already know, and there are some preachy speeches that go further or longer than they need.  A bit of judicious pruning would have helped – and we would still have got the point.

The strongest scenes are those where emotion dominates over the play’s ‘agenda’, such as when quiet scholarship girl Maeve Sullivan (Zoe Hawkins) is pressured into giving up the only chance she’ll ever have, leaving when her desperate brother (Gilbert Gauci) begs her to come home.  Other strong scenes are the romantic night trysts between the play’s central heroine, Tess Moffat (Claire Abagia in a consistently engaging, confident performance) and her would-be beau Ralph Mayhew (Chris Black), scenes of sexual and story tension. 

Perhaps most powerful of all – and in fact completely on message – is a scene in a haberdashery with a frighteningly aggressive, abusive tirade from male undergraduate Lloyd (Liam Gillespie).  He attacks Carolyn Addison (Natasha Arancini) for daring to be there at the university at all.  Elsewhere, Carolyn is the confident cosmopolitan; here she cowers in fear.  Even spirited Tess is silenced and only the shop’s owner (Mandy Murray) has a comeback.  This is the kind of scene that overcomes the play’s formal limitations.  Not only does Mr Gillespie deliver this bile with total, raging conviction (unafraid to have the audience hate his character), it makes the audience gasp at its sexist cruelty.  The play certainly dramatises – with great contemporary relevance – the derision that can rise to frenzied hatred - which masks the fear men can have of women.

It requires numerous locations, but designer George Tranter opts for an ingenious and inclusive naturalistic solution, employing all of the very wide stage.  A central area, on a revolve, provides railway stations, Cambridge gardens and streets, a library and a shop – all with minimal interruptions to the flow of the story.  Stage left, a Trinity College common room and a lecture theatre; stage right, an orchard, a Girton College (a women’s college) common room, and heroine Tess Moffat’s bedroom.  Only a well-resourced and well supported company can do something on this scale and it is a credit to all of them.  Meanwhile, Wendy Drowley and Cathy Christensen have dressed everyone beautifully in appropriate late 19th century garb – complete with bloomers, boaters and button boots.  Michael Rowe’s lighting is suitably evocative and operator Chris Martin executes the many transitions smoothly.

This is a late review: Blue Stockings has finished its run, but the ambition and professionalism of this production and its entertaining (and in this case, educational) choice of play is indicative of the impressive scope and reach of this company.

Michael Brindley

Image: Natasha Arancini (Carolyn) Thalia Dudek (Celia), Zoe Hawkins (Maeve) and Claire Abagla (Tess). Photographer David Belton.

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