London Tide

I read Our Mutual Friend far too many years ago and although I could remember the general plot it wasn't enough to have any idea of what to expect from this National Theatre collaboration between Ben Power and P.J. Harvey, directed by Ian Rickson.  

Set in a murky, foggy, poverty-stricken London town, the stage is bare and black, apart from the musicians, with the lighting contorting to become the dark Thames and simple pieces of wood, chairs and tables being the only props.  This is a play with music, but definitely not a 'musical'.  The first half was pretty dark in all aspects, and despite a lot of plot to get through it felt pretty slow in places.   The music at this first stage was pretty downbeat too and wasn't really capturing me.  So, by the interval (at one hour and 30 minutes in!!) I wasn’t at all sure if I had the stamina for more of the same. 

We were in the slips seats, but I was surprised to see that the circle was only about 25% full - the benefit of that is that there weren't long queues for the ice creams though.   We were a bit slow in realising that we could have grabbed one of the empty seats for the second half so by the time we thought about it, the lights were going down again.  

The second half took all of the plot gears that had been grinding in the first half and got them spinning.  The music stepped up beautifully and we got to a place where the characters came alive a bit and I began to care what happened to them as they all seek to better their lives by fair means and some foul.  Call out to Bella Maclean who got the best songs, particularly in the second half, but also had a voice that reminded me of PJ herself, and so really seemed to match the material.  The ensemble singing again was impressive in the second half too.  No dancing really but there was choreographed movement which seems to be quite fashionable at the moment, but none the less powerful for that.  The play  is steeped in London, as was the book, with a focus on the river and a love of the city shining through the murkiness, mud and gloom and that will probably be one of the main things I remember.   

It was satisfying to see the women centred in this production, and I enjoyed the  impatience with the nonsense from the men (Jenny, in particular had some great lines!).  So, despite the cartoonish nature of some of the villains, and the plot as pot boilerish as Dickens ever wrote it, it still felt satisfyingly complete and with a modern sensibility by the end.  

Earlier in the day we had been to see Now You See Us at Tate Britain, a celebration of professional women artists since the 1520s to the end of WW1.  While it is notable how few women artists we know of from that period, it was even more notable that any women managed to make a living at all, when considering the attitudes of husbands, the art schools and the Royal Academy amongst many, who worked hard to keep women in their place, firmly outside of the profession.  Unsurprising that many of the women artists were also early campaigners for women’s rights in general as well as for those in the profession. 

I liked this work by Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, who split her time between being a professional artist and co-founding the Society for the Promotion of the Employment of Women.