The Rat Trap

Written a hundred years ago and rarely performed, it was interesting to see this first Noel Coward work, written when he was 18 years old,  performed at the Park Theatre in a revised version by Bill Rosenfield.  It opens as we might expect, in a genteel drawing room and Sheila (Lily Nichol) and Keld (Ewan Miller), who are both aspiring writers about to get married the next day, meet with Sheila’s friend Olive and another 'bohemian' couple, Naomi and Edmund.  Naomi and Edmund have never married, and Naomi explains that marriage is a 'rat trap' that would destroy their relationship, and predicts that Sheila will end up sacrificing her career for Keld.  Sheila and Keld laugh it off, pointing out they are too clever and too in love to make the mistakes they see in others.  After this slightly clunky foreshadowing, no surprise then to see that after a giddy honeymoon period, the pair find themselves bickering all the time, and then, later still, Sheila is no longer working whilst Keld has a run of successful plays and an ego to match.    There were good performances from all the cast though, particularly Lily Nichol playing Sheila as sparkling, energetic and confident woman sinking into tired pragmatism.  Angela Sim was also excellent as Burridge, the all seeing and wise housekeeper/maid.

Despite some of the ideas and characters feeling a bit underdeveloped,  it held discussions still as valid today, about women taking a back seat to men in their career and whether marriage is really a good idea for women.  You only need to look at the stats on the gender pay gap to see how much all of this still applies.  There’s also an embryonic version of the debate that still rages today about who has the right to write about or enact experiences of people not like them - in this case about gender, and whether a man has the knowledge and insight to write a good female character, but it could just as easily be about race or sexuality.   The ending here is a sad one, but I felt even sadder considering the fact that despite the legal position and culture moving on in many ways, in many key respects things have hardly moved on at all in 100 years.

This is a bit of a curiosity, but worth a visit all the same.