|
THE ONLY GIRL IN THE WORLD
by Glyn Maxwell
Arcola Theatre
29 April to 24 May 2008
A review by Maddy Ryle for EXTRA! EXTRA!
Given that we already know at the outset that one of the characters in this two-hander (not including the violinist) is destined to be murdered by London’s most notorious serial killer, Glyn Maxwell has set up a tense and uncomfortable scenario for his audience with this play. Studio 2 at the Arcola is an intimate space, dark and enclosed, so the intensity of this well-written, well-acted performance is near claustrophobic at times. The downside was that this spell was broken in the play’s closing scenes, after the inevitable murder, when Joseph Barnett’s communications with the spirit of his dead lover lacked the fire and credibility of their conversations while she was living. Maxwell seems to have stuck fairly close to the established story (and all truth is disputed in the Ripper mythology) of Jack the Ripper’s supposed last victim. Mary Jane Kelly (played by Jennifer Kidd), or Marie-Jeanette as she liked to be known following a trip to France, was a young prostitute who came to London from Wales (though was probably born in Ireland). The play opens with her propositioning Joe Barnett (John Wark) at the close of his working day in Billinsgate fish market. In his innocence, however, Joe doesn’t understand the nature of the ‘transaction’ she is offering him, but falls instantly for the beautiful and charismatic Mary, who with her wit and worldliness has poor Joe hook, line and sinker from the start. Joe immediately moves Mary into his place – a palace compared to Mary’s usual dwellings, thanks to Joe’s position as a foreman. The one act play then traces the last days of Mary’s life, as the couple spend all Joe’s money and drift into poverty after he loses his job. Their increasing squalor and Mary’s destructive alcoholism (the stage, and Mary’s hair, get progressively untidier) are punctuated by Joe’s gruesome reports from the London Times of female murder victims in the East End. The light finally dawns on Joe when Mary returns to prostitution to pay the rent, and he moves out of the dingy flat they were forced to take in Miller’s Court. In the final week of her life Joe visits Mary, fearful for her safety and consumed by jealousy of the men who visit her as clients, and tries to take her back. Finally, inevitably, he is called in to identify her horribly mutilated body. Both Kidd and Wark are very good in their respective roles of the enigmatic Celtic spirit and the good-hearted East End boy. While Mary’s character is not exactly sympathetic (she spends all Joe’s money, and we are never quite convinced that she really cares for him), the power of her dialogue, which Kidd brings brilliantly to life, does instil empathy and the sense that she could have had so much more from life (according to Ripper folklore, Mary Kelly came from a ‘well-to-do’ family, was educated and a good artist). Kidd’s haunting Gaelic melodies, which Kelly liked to sing while drunk, perfectly offset the narrow mental and social confines of the impoverished East End life, which the staging manages to convey so well. Joe’s eagerness to do well by his ‘Marie’, and his blind sacrifice, are extremely touching, and though he despises streetwalkers when they first meet, the fact that he does not reject Mary when he discovers the truth speaks for the humanity of the play. The Ripper murders induced perhaps Britain’s first crime media frenzy, and with this play Maxwell asks us to recall the real story behind the victim’s photo in the paper – a plea which is perhaps even more relevant in our current media-saturated times. Maxwell’s script, his capturing of the colloquial language of his characters, and the actors’ delivery of it, is spot on, and creates a real authenticity for the performance (perhaps helped by the fact that most people watching the play in Hackney will be familiar with Whitechapel and the streets referred to). The staging is also excellent. There are many scene ‘changes’ in the play, and the progression from one to the next is handled with an unusual but effective device. Throughout the entire performance, a violinist (Andrew Mathys) is on stage with the couple, sitting or leaning against the back wall or occasionally moving around. He plays only two refrains, one plucked and one bowed, and these come in to indicate a forthcoming change in the action, followed by a sudden dimming of the lights and a sound like a record being violently stopped. These effects, along with the projection of moving static and grainy black and white images over the window pane which is suspended in the middle of the stage, add modern filmic horror effects to the production which work very well at adding to the tension. Given all this great work, it is a shame that the final section of the play is weaker, and dissipates this carefully cultivated intensity. The play thrives on the dynamic between Joe and the living Mary, and the sentimentality which Maxwell tries to give Mary’s ‘ghost’ at the end takes away from the firebrand character which Kidd portrays so well as her in life. Nevertheless, this is otherwise an accomplished production, and is worth going to see for the way it brings, not necessarily the Jack the Ripper story to life, but – more interestingly – the human and social context of those events.
Arcola Theatre Box Office: 020 7503 1646 Monday to Saturday evenings at 8.15pm, Studio 2
Copyright © EXTRA! EXTRA All rights reserved
|
