REVIEW: OVERTONES by Alice Gerstenberg at Bread and Roses Theatre 13-17 June

‘a great production of a fantastic, underproduced play’ ★★★★

This gem of a one-act play by Alice Gerstenberg still feels fresh more than a century after it was written, at least in this production energetically acted in a tiny room above the Bread and Roses Theatre. Daniel Passi’s staging plays with the theatre’s unusual space, turning the heavy black curtains that block out the summer sun at the back of the theatre into part of the action: as the play progresses, they are opened little by little as if to promise an eventual laying bare, a making visible of everything that is going on. Fittingly for a play about insistent, unspoken desires, the curtains are never completely swept open - nothing is revealed.

The four actors, Carolina Emidio, Marta Molina, Maria Luisa Sá, and Gabrielle Silvestre, are passionate and often very funny as two divided women and their psyches. The action is very simple: two women have tea and talk about their husbands. But the play’s ingenuity is in its use of two actors to play each woman: an inner and an outer self. Interior monologues are reframed as dialogues. The outer selves of the polite, proper Harriet and Margaret are mirrored, pestered, insulted, and goaded by their mirror selves Hetty and Maggy, who also interact with each other in open displays of violent dislike in a way that their outer counterparts cannot. The mirror selves open up a vista into the whirling needs and desires beneath the polite veneer of both women, allowing us a glimpse into their separate hopes and sorrows. Passi’s adaptation adds a lot of movement and, on one occasion, a dance between Margaret’s inner and outer selves. This choice brings some welcome dynamism into a play that is all about talk – what is said and, crucially, what remains unsaid.

The costumes are simple and the stage almost bare; the focus is on the women’s bodies and words and how they are trying to keep their bodies and words from communicating the truth. The luxurious interior of Harriet’s house is left to the imagination, with few props to distract from the psychological turmoil happening onstage. (The one exception is a very funny moment with a Mr Kipling cake). This is a great production of a fantastic, underproduced play.

OVERTONES by Alice Gerstenberg, directed by Daniel Passi, produced by Overtone Theatre, The Bread and Roses Theatre, 13^th-17^th June.

Cast: Marta Molina, Maria Luisa Sá, Gabrielle Silvestre, and Carolina Emidio.

https://www.breadandrosestheatre.co.uk/whats-on.html

Reviewer Clio Doyle is a playwright and university lecturer.