Edinburgh Fringe 2024
In The Lady Garden
The Lady Gardeners, Theatre Royal Plymouth and Pleasance
Genre: New Writing, Solo Play, Theatre
Venue: Pleasance Courtyard
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
With echoes of Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads, this piece is gentle and funny, but also probing and layered, reminding us that older women have stories worth telling.
In the Lady Garden is an entertaining and heartfelt piece that centres on the lived experience of older women, challenging the audience to see them in all their complexity and strength.
Review
In the Lady Garden begins in the stark simplicity of a police cell. Alice, our protagonist, wakes from a restless sleep, disentangling herself from the thin, scratchy regulation issue blanket. This is her first time in custody—an experience her mother would surely be horrified by, though perhaps not, Alice feels, entirely surprised.
Alice is 69, a number that feels intentionally loaded given the subject matter. “I know a lot about sex – but mainly as theory,” she quips, setting the tone for the rest of the play. From her unconventional start at a convent school to her long, mostly uneventful marriage to Keith, Alice’s life is a blend of the mundane and the extraordinary, recounted with a sharp wit and a touch of melancholy.
Director Deborah Edgington’s minimalist set, comprised of three wooden blocks that serve as not just a police cell, but her childhood home, school and workplace, keeps the focus firmly on Julia Faulkner’s engaging performance. The direction is sharp, with movement that feels purposeful and deliberate, always moving the story forward.The cell may be sparse, but Alice’s memories are rich and vivid, taking the audience on a fast-paced journey through her life. Faulkner’s portrayal of Alice is both funny and poignant, capturing the complexity of a woman who has lived a life full of contradictions and quiet, if mostly unsuccessful, rebellion.
Alice’s reminiscences flow like the thoughts of a distracted mind, leaping from her working-class childhood with her mother and Auntie Vi, who smoked Woodbines in the kitchen with their stockings rolled down. These memories are tinged with humour but also the learning that society places shame on girls for behaviour merely laughed off in boys.
As the story unfolds, Alice refuses to let life defeat her. A chain of social media mishaps offers her a chance at escape, and she seizes it, turning the tables on the world in a way that’s both surprising and satisfying. Faulkner’s energy never wanes; she moves around the stage in her grey tracksuit and slippers, seamlessly slipping into the various characters that populate Alice’s memories.
The laughter is plentiful, coming from both older audience members who recognize the truth in Alice’s observations in their own memories and younger ones who are amused by the outlandishness of it all. The play’s setting in Bunker One, with its intimate thrust stage, adds to the intensity, making the us feel as though we are in the cell with Alice.
While the play’s focus on Alice’s life and memories is engaging, keeping her linked to her present situation in a police cell waiting for her solicitor would help reveal the story of the recent events leading up to her arrest and added additional depth and context to the narrative.
The play ends with an uplifting twist, a late-coming-of-age story that’s both entertaining and moving. Created by a company of women in their 60s and 70s, In the Lady Garden is a refreshing addition to the Fringe, proving that compelling theatre isn’t just the province of the young. With echoes of Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads, this piece is gentle and funny, but also probing and layered, reminding us that older women have stories worth telling.
In the Lady Garden is an entertaining and heartfelt piece that centres on the lived experience of older women, challenging the audience to see them (us) in all their (our) complexity and strength.
