REVIEW: The Party Girls
By Gary Murray, volunteer reviewer
Anyone with the kind of lives led by the Mitford sisters today would no doubt have their own reality TV series.
They still hold an endless fascination, these six sisters from an aristocratic family who all took very different paths and were at the heart of some of the most momentous events of the 1930s.
What happens to sisterly bonds when one of them (Jessica or "Decca") becomes a communist, one (Unity) a fascist devoted to Hitler?
Nancy became a famous writer, Diana married the British fascist leader Oswald Mosley, Pam (who we don’t see) became a farmer and Debo was the Duchess of Devonshire.
Amy Rosenthal’s play The Party Girls aims to explore this and much more during its run at the Devonshire Park Theatre this week. She’s the daughter of the late playwright Jack Rosenthal and actor Maureen Lipman.
Set during the 1930s, 1940s and 1960s, the play moves easily back and forth along its timeline. I particularly liked the device of a thin curtain at the front of the stage where the place and date were projected.
In fact the whole thing looks fantastic; set, costumes and wigs. The different eras are evoked beautifully in Simon Kenny’s set design, though in at least one scene last night a rogue smoke machine was pumping out obscuring clouds. The soundscape by Adrienne Quartly was just right.
There are some good performances too, particularly from Joe Coen as Bob Treuhaft, Jessica's husband, and Elisabeth Dermot Walsh as Diana. Flora Spencer-Longhurst as Debo has the biggest transformation to handle, going from teenager in the 1930s to a 50-year-old in later scenes. And she pulls it off very well.
At the heart of the piece are Ell Potter as Unity and Emma Noakes as Jessica. Again some good performances but both, particularly Emma Noakes, had a tendency to become too shrill and strident at times of anger or emotion.
I thought that after the promise of the first half that the second never really came to the boil, although there is a chilling scene between Diana and Jessica where Diana’s Holocaust denial is exposed.
With the sisters caught up in historical events, there is necessarily the odd bit of clunky exposition such as “The rally – you know, at Nuremberg”, but thankfully very little.
Ultimately it’s a play about how politics and the personal interacted in this extraordinary family.
Though it doesn’t quite get where it wants to go, this is a good piece of theatre and well worth seeing.
:: The Party Girls runs until Saturday, 27 September, at the Devonshire Park Theatre. Tickets available here.
:: Gary Murray was a professional actor for 14 years in theatre, radio, TV and even a couple of operas. After many years on the tech side of the ticketing industry, he now works at Tech Resort and is a volunteer reviewer for Eastbourne Reporter.
