Rebekah Smith
69 years old and waking up in a jail cell. What will Keith say?
In the Lady Garden is an hour-long monologue, directed by Deb Edgington where mother and wife Alice (Julia Faulkner) takes us through the circumstances and histories that have led her to being held in jail and waiting for her attorney.
She reflects on the choices that brought her to an uncomfortable room with a bed and foul-smelling toilet and invited the audience in on her thoughts, her memories and her larks. Alice is candid in her revelations, holding nothing back, and warmly accepting the audience as along for the ride. There are many moments of big laughs and Bab Horton’s tight script can be piercingly funny. Julia Faulkner is an engaging host and makes her prison cell setting feel like a cup of tea at a breakfast table on a warm sunny day.
This one-woman show dives into the double-standards of growing up as a girl in the twentieth century and looks hopefully towards a future where change is in action. Powerful memories and sincere reflections evoke the shame installed on little girls which fails to be washed away with time. Our bodies were never innocent and exist only within the shadow of men’s gaze. It is heartbreaking to see Alice bewildered at her husband’s self-acceptance and unable to see her own form as something pure and glorious in itself. Sex is a central theme in the play as Alice navigates her lack of sexual satisfaction in a society where her pleasure was never an end-goal and only an unwelcome reminder of her unholy woman form.
In an early moment, Alice decides that older women should turn to crime. A fair point. When simply growing older is enough to make you invisible and underestimated, surely it would be a very lucrative career.
It’s one of the more intriguing ideas explored in the play, and one I would have liked to see more of. We are at a point in time now where the hypocrisy of young feminism is out for all to see. Poignant too, as over the last few months, one of the biggest TikTok trends has been the ‘gaslighting our mum with a fake game’, a prank aimed at isolating mothers. It involves a family, where the children and their fathers are in on the joke, going round the circle saying gibberish and praising each other for getting the rules of the game right. In the end it gets to the mother who copies diligently and is berated, shunned and laughed at. Of course, there is no right answer and she could never win. And we see her, sitting with that familiar isolation and embarrassment because this isn’t the first time they have all ganged up on and isolated her. Because it’s just a joke.
If you spend enough time of FeministTok at the moment, it won’t take long before someone shares the famous Bonnie Burstow quote: ‘Often father and daughter look down on mother together. They exchange meaningful glances when she misses a point. They agree that she is not as bright as they are, cannot reason as they do. This collusion does not save the daughter from the mother’s fate”. And it’s an endearing moment in the play where we see a similar feeling. Alice touches upon the radical feminist acts of her own youth and those of her classmates. She dismays at the cluelessness of her children, who could not imagine a world where she is up to date with sex and worldliness and has enough of her own intelligence to me more than a woman working on a factory line. This is an idea reiterated at the end. I won’t spoil it, but we discover that there are consequences for those who will berate older women online thinking that there is neither the drive, the wherewithal or the smarts to do something about it.
However, there are pitfalls to a monologue style show. The play is narratively driven and lacks dramatic moments and engaging stage craft. It is an anecdotal tale that could benefit from in-the-moment revelations and climaxes. Scenes that feel active and alive are few and far between, which is a shame as this can result in audience attention drifting. There are also moments where Alice reveals very important personal pieces of information to the audience, that insist further divulgence, and yet these a passed over quickly without giving us time to digest their weight.
Sapphic moments drift easily through the script and balance well with Alice’s characterisation and experience of sex. It’s certainly representation that I’ll never tire of and was a nice surprise. It is a pleasant performance for a pleasant afternoon. If you’re looking for something light and droll to start your day, or to ease uncertain older family members into the Fringe atmosphere, it would be a very good choice. Tender moments are swaddled and nurtured in a garden of belly laughs and quick-wit. Wicked at times and thought-provoking at others – it is a welcome reminder to listen to the older women in our lives and enjoy the stories they have to share.
Recommended Drink: a large glass of Tuscan Montepulciano.
Catch In the Lady Garden between 5-12, 14-19, 21-26 at 14:15 at Pleasance Courtyard Bunker One. Tickets are available through the EdFringe Box Office.
Jake Mace
