Last updated at 13:58, Wednesday, 30 June 2010

WHEN I agreed to review the performance of Women Behaving Badly at the Queen’s Hall, I failed to notice that it promised to be a World Cup Football-Free Zone.

Going solo: Fiona Knowles in Women Behaving Badly, which was on at the Queen’s Hall, Hexham.

So it was that I found myself watching the antics of Scotland’s MsFits Theatre Company rather than those of the Unfits, the moody millionaire members of England’s ineffectual football team.

The atmosphere in the Queen’s Hall was electric. You could have cut it with a curling tong.

More than a hundred women eager – nay frantic – to enjoy themselves encouraged by the anarchy of the title and the copious lubrication of free wine. A few mere men like me cowered in our seats and prepared for condemnation.

And the opening words of Rona Munro’s new play delivered by the solo actress Fiona Knowles got the ball rolling – “The first person I killed was my husband”. It earned the first appreciative roar from an audience determined to behave badly themselves.

They were to be frustrated for the play was confusing, over-repetitive and self-indulgent.

It was billed as a poignant, funny, comedy drama. But it failed to live up to its billing; the script was weak, neither bleak enough to shock, nor black enough to amuse. And it was not saved by a series of vocal and facial contortions that only emphasised just how two-dimensional the characters were.

After Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads, it’s difficult to compare his one-person pieces in which characters slowly develop and reveal themselves, with the unchanging monotonous cartoon cut outs of Bella, Joyce and Rita that were presented for our inspection.

Bella was an elderly lady who had discovered a new purpose in life, the murder of anybody who annoyed her.

Joyce was her care-worker fearful that council cutbacks would rationalise her into unemployment, while Rita was a psychologically damaged client dependent on Joyce.

The interweaving of their narratives ended with the eventual discovery of myriads of skeletons in Bella’s garden. There was scope for a really grand-guignol tale or a Hitchcock spinechiller but it was all too slow and flabbily self-indulgent.

There were some nice conceits – the idea that the police and Neighbourhood Watch were really to blame for failing to detect such flagrant mass-murder.

And I liked the wish of Bella to get her slaughter over early so that she could settle down with her Ovaltine and Jeremy Paxman. But these were rare giggles in a stodge of tedium.

As yet another blackout occurred and a newly donned coat and hat signalled a return to a previous character, there was much secret peeking at watches.

There was, perhaps, enough good material to fill 15 minutes of stand-up, but never enough to stretch this see-through flimsy material for over two hours. Was it only that short?

As the American satirist Mort Sahl once pleaded of an overlong film... this was an Exodus of a play ... it needed a brave member of the audience to stand and demand... Let my people go!

The final audience reaction was mixed. Feminine solidarity and generosity ensured that the sheer physical effort of a marathon solo performance was applauded. One row of enthusiastic friends did cheer loudly.

Comments near me ranged from: Did you enjoy that? Well sort of, but it wasn’t what I expected, to the observation by a mere male that the management should have intervened at the interval and called off the show to save us all from further punishment.

My devotion to live theatre would not let me go to that extreme though I do have to acknowledge that this was one of the most inept pieces of drama that I have endured for many years.

There is only one silver-lined consolation. Things could have been much much worse.

I might have stayed in and watched England’s goalless draw with Algeria!

First published at 09:37, Friday, 25 June 2010
Published by http://www.hexhamcourant.co.uk