Lyonesse, Harold Pinter Theatre, London
Echoing #MeToo and Sunset Boulevard, Elaine (Kristin Scott Thomas) is an actress who suddenly and mysteriously disappeared. No-one knows why or where. Lily James is a young wife and mother and film developer, Kate, sent by her manager Sue (Niky Wardley) to interview Elaine and get her story.
Missed potential is the main theme I take away from Penelope Skinner’s play — and not just Elaine’s or Kate’s. The writing raises lots of ideas — #MeToo, womanhood, careers, can you have it all as a woman? Truth telling and in speaking out who owns your truth and story when it’s out there in the media. Touched on, but never fully developed, is the idea of belief and how victims of abuse are portrayed and understood as they speak out.
Elaine (it turns out) escaped an abusive relationship and power dynamic with a Harvey Weinstein-like, much lauded theatre director — simply by vanishing. Now she is ready to speak out and is ready to use the media to be heard.
Kate is juggling her own needs and wants alongside motherhood, marriage, and not being listened to or understood. After a traumatic birth, she is very reluctant to have another child — her husband longs for another child, a son. Hysteria, women’s treatment in medicine and care is hinted at, but never really fully explored. And that’s the problem — there are so many ideas hinted at here but never fully explored or developed in a real way. Instead it descends into cliche and farce, in a mash-up of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf and Life in Squares. Controlling relationships are covered quite lightly.
Having arrived to interview Elaine, Kate is pushed heavily by her subject into flirting with Chris (Sara Powell), her helpful and widowed neighbour. After some initial hostility, Elaine decides that she does want to go ahead with the treatment of her life — maybe even a come-back as she could star in it. Kate embraces the freedom of no-husband, no-kids, no-dogs and dumps her old life, choosing to stay in Elaine’s home. Greg comes to find out what is going on and why his loved wife has changed so much.
Worst of all is Greg (Kate’s husband) who is never allowed to be more than cardboard cut-out and villain. It is to James Corrigan’s credit that Greg comes across as any kind of human being at all and that we warm to him. Whilst hinting at deep truth that charming people can be coercive and manipulative too, it never really explores relationships or maternal trauma (such as near-death birth experiences). The closest the writing gets to truth is when Kate and Greg actually talk to each other in the second act.
Weirdly, the magical cottage of bohemian freedom in Cornwall is described as a warm place. The set shows an obviously damp house with leaks — they often move bowls and buckets around to catch the drips. Hopefully irony — it’s hard to tell.
Essentially marriage is bad, men are bad, motherhood is bad, pregancy, birth and children are…bad for women. Rather than attempting any nuance or depth, we descend into cliche and learn not a lot; there’s little of trying to work things through or understanding. (Though I did enjoy the audience collective gasp during a reveal). Ideas tumble about, are picked up and put down, but never fully explored.
Kristin Scott Thomas performs amazingly, holding the show together. Worth watching for her telling of her story alone — it’s dramatic and then some. Lily James gets to flap around like Hugh Grant and then becomes a hippy-ish bohemian, though she does get a killer line of how she wants her no to be heard first time, rather than having to repeat. Niky Wardley energetically plays an unsupportive female manager in a series of silky pussy-bow power blouses, who eventually starts to produce unsupportive content for Elaine too.
Overall, rather than magical, mythical Lyonesse (kingdom/commune of free women?) or Lionesses, the play lacks roar or bite, hopping between genres and entertainingly hitting all the cliches instead. Given the thoughts it raises, it had a lot of potential to explore so many things — which it sadly never does.
