The setting for Paul Smith’s production of Maureen Lennon’s new play is a picturesque pink oasis on the windswept Hull dockfront. Ushered into an imitation wedding marquee by stage management and box office staff wearing matching suits, we’re shown to our table and invited to “enjoy the wedding”.
This immersive setting is a bit of a misdirection though, in a couple of ways. The play itself unfolds in-the-round on a central raised platform and includes almost no audience interaction or immersion beyond these initial trappings. It also shows us everything but a wedding—the stressful and anxiety-laden build-up, the rehearsals, the hen dos, the aftermath. This is a play not about weddings but about marriages: about what sacrifice and self-denial is needed to keep them going. And under the pink and peach of Bethany Wells’s flexible and well-conceived set design, there is an ugly truth about the lies that men tell women and the power that women are made to cede in service of those lies.
The basic set-up is that Jodie (Laura Meredith) and Mike (Jonathan Raggett) are engaged, and are, with Jodie’s dad Phil (Dan Maloney) and mum Alison (Madeleine MacMahon), planning the wedding. Jodie’s childhood friend, Lucy (Elle Ideson)—eternally single, perpetually on the pull—is to be maid of honour.
Maureen Lennon’s script works deftly through the permutations of these characters as we see depictions of the familiar rituals involved in planning such an event. Dad is proud and uncharacteristically emotive, mum wants to pass on advice as well as meaningful family heirlooms, groom-to-be wants to ingratiate himself with the in-laws. These relationships are sketched quickly and seemingly effortlessly: Lennon’s dialogue is impressively and smoothly crafted, even if most of these scenes could be predicted more or less beat for beat as they unfold.
A mention should also be made of some fine pieces of songwriting (composed by Isabelle Wombwell) which are delivered powerfully by the charismatic MacMahon. MacMahon struts the stage with confidence and holds the audience’s focus with an impressive vocal performance; she is an endlessly watchable performer who, in a strong cast, stands out.
Into the fairly gentle sequence of scenes laying out the family dynamic, something much darker is introduced. This is fairly well-telegraphed (and the programme’s content warnings will also have tipped audiences off), so calling this a ‘twist’ would be overselling it somewhat, but suffice to say Lennon deals with the ideas of manipulation, gaslighting and violence in ways that are sympathetic but grimly predictable.
Paul Smith’s direction and the strengths of the core performers manage the space and interpersonal dynamics lightly and with purpose, and Jessie Addinall’s lighting design works miraculously well given the challenges of the purpose-built venue.
This is a decent show with skill and care behind it—just a fairly predictable one in terms of the way it approaches its story. If anything, it suffers from being somewhat oversold in publicity material. The tagline calls it a “play you’ll never forget”, and the blurb trumpets the acrobatic skills of the cast. These danced and gymnastic interludes (choreographed by Danielle Clements) add visual texture to the piece and are again performed with skill, but feel interposed rather than woven into the fabric of the play.
Maureen Lennon has a number of scripts in the works with Middle Child and elsewhere, and on the strength of this showing, I will follow them with interest, even if here her storytelling tends to the soapy rather than the substantial.