The Busy Body, Southwark Playhouse

The tone is set during the prologue. Having swiftly dispensed with Thomas Baker’s condescending original, in which the audience were urged not to run away just because the play they were about to see was by – gasp – a woman, Jessica Swale’s contemporary replacement rattles through a list of the best British female playwrights, from Aphra Behn onwards, referencing everyone from Fanny Burney to Debbie Tucker Green along the way. It’s a lively, witty beginning and one which encapsulates Swale’s approach to the material: honouring the spirit in which it was written while bringing a more contemporary sensibility into play.

Susanna Centlivre belongs fairly near the beginning of that list, once regarded as the ‘second woman of the English stage’ after Behn, she was the kind of brilliant individual who was determined to make her mark regardless of sex, dressing up as a man in order to attend university lectures and going on to write plays that remained popular well into the nineteenth century. The Busy Body – one of her greatest successes – was written in 1709, putting it far earlier in the period than Swale’s last eighteenth century revival – Hannah Cowley’s The Belle’s Stratagem – but she draws from it the same delicious mix of charm and warmth. And though her track record with plays of this era is already well proven, she really excels herself here. This is a joyous, delightful production, directed with a lightness of a touch and with one eyebrow elegantly arched throughout, though – crucially – with affection rather than cynicism.

The play’s structure is far from unfamiliar: two love-plots intertwine, each reflecting the other. In the first, the pretty young heiress Miranda has to fend off the attentions of her amorous guardian, Sir Francis Gripe, while winning the hand of her admirer, Sir George Airey. In the second strand, Isabinda is all but imprisoned by her over-protective hispanophile mother who is determined to marry her off to a wealthy Spanish merchant, even though she is already well and truly smitten with Sir Francis’s son, Charles. Throughout all this, Charles’ friend Marplot, big of heart but low on smarts, acts as the busy-body of the title and his well -meant meddling threatens to scupper both couples’ plans.

The cast – several of whom have worked with Swale before, either on The Belle’s Stratagem or her earlier production of Sheridan’s The Rivals – all display a similar delicacy. The performances are knowing in tone without being too removed. There are plenty of asides and a degree of audience interaction, but these never fracture the world of the production. Each contrivance of plot is approached with suitable energy and conviction. The comic timing and delivery is brilliantly pitched; faces remain straight even when Alexandra Guelff’s Miranda rebukes Marplot for trying to look at her monkey. Michael Lindall is suitably dashing as Charles, investing his character with considerable emotional weight, especially during the scenes with his brusque and dismissive dad, while also embracing all the business with false moustaches and the scaling of invisible walls. Ella Smith, while clearly also revelling in the silliness of some of the writing, is sparkly and coquettish as Isabinda and Cerith Flinn is endearing as the hapless Marplot.

There’s no Beyonce this time, no one is invited to ‘Put a Ring On It,’ instead there are a series of songs composed by Harriet Oughton, with lyrics by Swale, that once again manage to be incredibly clever and funny without being bruisingly postmodern. These musical interludes give the production its spine, its shape, heightening the comedy and generally making the whole exercise even more blissful.

Reviewed for Exeunt

Palace of the End at the Arcola Theatre

This Arcola’s staging of Judith Thompson’s triptych of monologues about Iraq is nothing if not timely, coinciding as it does with both the recent Wikileaks revelations and the results of the inquest into the death of Dr David Kelly. But even if it hadn’t arrived at such an apt time, Jessica Swale’s production would still exert considerable power. The combination of some fine, fine writing and Swale’s superb use of the Arcola’s intimate second studio leaves the audience dazed and unsettled.

The play is divided into three strands. In the first of these Jade Williams plays a young soldier clearly based in large part on Lynndie England. Pregnant and fearful for her future, she feels little real regret for her actions, yet Thompson’s nunaced portrait does not demonise her. It’s a layered account of a young woman from West Virginia for whom casual cruelty has always featured large in her life. She simply doesn’t see the people she has tortured and humiliated as fully human and seems more perturbed about the (mostly vile) comments flying around about her on the internet, especially the ones where she is called ‘ugly’ and, worse, ‘a feminist.’ In Williams’ hands, this woman - this girl - appears simultaneosuly appalled and thrilled at the situation she has found herself in.

The second monologue features Robin Soans in compelling form as Dr David Kelly, contemplating his actions (and his inaction) as he awaits death on Harrowdown Hill. Soans was excellent in the Arcola’s recent production of Pieces of Vincent, and here he gives another powerful performance, one that suucessfully takes a figure from the headlines and makes a man of him once more, a husband, a father, fallible but also noble. Collected and genial at first, he becomes increasingly anguished as he recounts the death of an Iraqi bookseller and his family, people he was close to, a seeming catalyst for his decision to speak out.

The final thread concerns Nehrjas, an Iraqi woman played by Imogen Smith. At first her warm recollections come as welcome relief after the intensity of the David Kelly sequence, but this section is ultimately no less harrowing, as Nehrjas describes the appalling torture of herself and her children at the hands of Saddam’s Secret Police. Smith gives a rich and dignified performance, one that trusts the potency of the text. This last piece provides context for the first two, rooting them, and yet the story exists for itself, it never feels like it’s serving a purpose.

This is not verbatim theatre, the words are drawn from imagination but rooted in truth. This gives Thompson a degree of freedom; there are subtle echoes in the writing, recurring images of flying, of falling, Alice-like, through the looking glass. But Thompson never strays too far from recognisable events. There are some beautiful passages but they’re always anchored to something solid.

Though it’s a common pitfall of monologue-based theatre, Swale’s production is never static; if anything the opposite is true. The actors pace the space, engaging with audience, meeting their eyes. Soans in particular makes the audience aware of the complicity inherent in inaction, making full use of the capacity for connection in such a small venue. He fixes the audience with an interrogative stare, before calmly thanking those gathered for being here to share his last moments.

Simon Kenny’s simple design - twin glass cubes and a solitary tree (which comes to have dual significance) - both divides and unites the three speakers and the stories are further delineated by Christopher Nairne’s lighting, the colour subtly shifting from piece to piece. All these elements are neatly tied together, and the resulting production exerts a considerable and lasting hold. There isn't much time left for the Arcola in their current home (click here for more details of their appeal); if this is one of the last things staged in this space, it makes for a memorable way to bow out.

An extended version of a review that appeared in The Stage.