Brighton Year-Round 2025
Women Only, Albert’s Bridge
Brighton Little Theatre
Genre: Adaptation, Comedy, Contemporary, Fringe Theatre, LGBT Theatre, Radio Play, Short Plays, Theatre
Venue: Brighton Little Theatre
Festival: Brighton Year-Round
Low Down
Sets by the consummate Steven Adams should be up for an award this time though. So apart from that, what havoc are directors Carolyn Chinn and Craig Hearn wreaking with David Tristram’s Women Only, and Tom Stoppard’s 1967 radio play Albert’s Bridge at Brighton Little Theatre till 1 November ?
Albert’s Bridge is a Stoppard rarity you’re unlikely to see again. And Women Only seems swiftly established as a tiny, semi-precious comic gem.
Review
Autumn at Brighton Little Theatre usually means a double-bill. And they don’t come more ambitious than the sets for these two contrasting comedies. Both last 45 minutes separated by a 15-minute interval. Those sets by the consummate Steven Adams should be up for an award this time though. So apart from that, what havoc are directors Carolyn Chinn and Craig Hearn wreaking with David Tristram’s Women Only, and Tom Stoppard’s 1967 radio play Albert’s Bridge at Brighton Little Theatre till 1 November ? Is the latter the only comedy that ends up killing 1800 people? Maybe. Just a thought mind.
Women Only
“I like you much better before you had the cataracts operation. You didn’t see so much then.” Mother and daughter comedies aren’t so thick in the theatres that we can’t have one written by a man. David Tristram’s Women Only is one of several short comedies by him to be touring – this and another was staged by the Grass Roots Theatre Company only last month. Born 1957 or 1958, we’re told, he’s written 33 comedies or comic novels (I like the blur) and it’s clear we’ve been missing a minor master who works in ivory and ends up with rhinestones.
Directed by Carolyn Chinn it’s a two-hander starring the sublime Ann Atkins as Ruth and her long-suffering daughter, or well, you’ll find out. This is Laura, where Suzanne Heritage discovers her cosy assumptions upended at the bottom of a few G&Ts.
Adams set (and sound design), features (we’ve been warned in the notes) extraordinary blue-grey based wallpaper involving pink flowers (Tom Williams’ painting); and the most solid interior I’ve seen for some time. It’s a holiday home, both comfy and blandly anonymous, sofas and table, circular table chair, and a bookshelf. It’s unnervingly real, but we’ll also find after the interval everything hinges on… hinges. Glenys Harries-Rees has less to differentiate in lighting this play than the next, though it’s all very neatly pointed.
Those G&Ts for instance light a way to revelations. “What gin and tonic?” “The ones you’re about to pour.” Ruth’s in command throughout, despite laconic Laura’s one-liners. “Dad… lovely man? Could be. But sometimes… he was a bit of an arse. There are things about your father I haven’t told you.” Brothers aren’t brothers, cousins are brothers and you’ll find out why. “Why does it feel my whole family tree has been attacked by a psychopathic axe-wielding maniac?” And that’s just the start.
If Heritage grumbles with the force of a woman whose husband has left a her after six months, Atkins’ Ruth is more than the wily older woman sneaking fags when she says she’s given up. Some of the inevitable older-woman-as-anarchist model fits Ruth, but she’s more than that, and Atkins relishes her truth by never guying Ruth’s reveals or overplaying the language of rug-pulling. Heritage plays up to this and is particularly affecting when, quiet movingly she explodes in tears at the final reveals of her life. After this she speaks with a quietly devastated authority.
Everything she thinks she knows about herself, her identity on many levels is quietly, cheerfully demolished by Atkins’ patient, amused, sometimes mischievous Ruth. And Ruth has plans for Laura that Laura would never believe. Nor will you. A miniature delight.
Albert’s Bridge
Albert’s Bridge raised eyebrows at the time. Indeed Stoppard was knocked back a little for this and other short (stage) plays in the late 1960s, after his huge success with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. He recovered with full-lengths. So how do you make a 1967 radio play land in a theatre? Especially a fantastical existential satire?
A set. After the interval Adams’ design has swung round on its hinges and revealed itself as an astonishing semi-abstract construction: a backdrop of articulated bridge spans the upstage, with gestures of it on foregrounded blocks with the same x pattern: some of this underscored in Williams’ painting. There’s also a table on occasion for family meals or board meetings. The surprise mechanism of this bridge is the coup of the evening, if the set hadn’t provided enough. Harries-Rees lighting works chiaroscuro magic and Adams’ sound (operated by Harries-Rees) is needed for some spectacular moments.
There’s new talent in this predominantly young seven-strong cast; several recent graduates make their first or second appearance at BLT. Albert (Sebastian O’Driscoll Henderson, appealingly energised with Albert’s hauteur) is himself a preppy philosophy graduate at odds with his prosperous business empire father (Steven Adams) and Mother (Emily Rawlinson). Later, having impregnated their maid Kate (an affectionate, then disaffected Katie Ford) Albert surprises everyone by doing the decent thing. Though Kate too finds Albert’s philosophy has taken him to… Well the uni didn’t want him as a postgraduate; but a bridge calls.
Initially with three others we spy Albert painting a bridge that, when the task is completed eight years on, needs doing all over again. We’re more in an expiring era of duffle-coated existentialists, Colin Wilson and coffee-bars. Stoppard’s play seems a brilliant student exercise in a world of say, 1962. It’s Albert who volunteers when Adams in his role as Council accountant Fitch, full of twitches and ruses, convinces oration-prone Chairman Rawlinson (in the twittering teeth of councillors George – Robyn Ives – and Frida Jensen’s Dave, also painters) that a new durable paint can cut labour and be painted by just one person.
Logistics unravel, rather in the way Albert, more protective of his bridge than ever, dandles existentialist solipsism with his new silver paint, brushing off the brown. In the litanies of “slap, across, down” in Albert’s ritual method, it’s inherently poetic in its absurdity; this early Stoppard is rapt with a left-field poetry.
Having impressed as northern painter-gaffer ‘Dad’, Daniel Carr in his second role as would-be-suicide Frazer is continually put off his leap by Albert’s impatient “get on with it then.” Carr at his best recites in a rapt quiet voice as he stands on one of the promontories (a small raised box) and envisages a world of clean logistics: Frazer’s dysfunction complements Albert’s. At other points Carr hasn’t quite realised what a powerful voice he has. There’s a slight knock-on vocally, as several actors raise voices. It needs a little dialling down in this space. That’s nothing to what happens to Albert’s bridge next though. Be prepared.
The stark contrast between these two plays – and their sets – yet again proves how deeply inventive BLT is, and with such a depth of talent, like a true repertory company. Albert’s Bridge is a Stoppard rarity you’re unlikely to see again. And Women Only seems swiftly established as a tiny, semi-precious comic gem. Thoroughly recommended.
Stage Manager Vicky Horner, DSM Dawn Draper, ASM Rosalind Caldwell, Rehearsal Prompt Jo Newman, Set Painting Tom Williams, Set Construction The Cast & Crew, Costumes (Albert’s Bridge) Christine Fox, Myles Locke, Photography Miles Davies.
