REVIEW: THE REVLON GIRL at Park Theatre 10 - 14 November 2026
‘delicate and engaging, and all the performances are immaculate’ ★★★★
In 1966, a spoil tip that the National Coal Board had sited on a hilltop above the village of Aberfan slid down the mountain and buried the village school. It drowned 116 school children and 28 teachers in a wave of slurry, and left an entire community bereft and in mourning. Neil Anthony Docking has written a play that explores some of the effects of the disaster. The play is sensitive and moving and also, impressively, really funny.
In a room in the local community centre, a representative of the Revlon cosmetics empire has come to give make-up tips and sell beauty aids to a group of women from the village. They are a varied and slightly mis-matched group with one huge thing in common; all of them lost children when the tip came down. The women are all named, the cosmetics demonstrator is just called Revlon. She doesn’t share their history, and she is also from Bristol, sixty long miles from the Merthyr Valley and much further away than that economically and historically.
Docking gives all five women their moment to tell their story. Maxine Evans’ direction is delicate and engaging, and all the performances are immaculate. It is very satisfying to see a play taking on such a sensitive, potentially overwhelming topic, and make it resonate with truth. The women respond to their grief differently but recognisably, and the slightly off-kilter efforts of a make-up saleswoman to help is described accurately but not dismissed – she is doing her best, it is an impossible situation for an outsider to comprehend, and the normalcy of her input is of value as the bereaved mothers put their shattered lives back together.
It’s a tough watch. It’s a valuable statement. It’s an opportunity for a fine cast (Llinos Daniel, Hedydd Dylan, Charlotte Gray, Mirain Haf Roberts, and Antonia Kinlay) to strut their impressive stuff, and it’s on until 14th November. It’s a very good reason to go to Finsbury Park.
THE REVLON GIRLNBy Neil Anthony Docking, Directed by Maxine Evans
