‘An ambitious and wildly imaginative production that suffers under the weight of debris from the breaking of the fourth wall’

 

 

THREE STARZ 

 

The Play: The Inseparables by Grace Joy Howarth – based on the novel by Simone de Beauvoir, translated by Lauren Elkin. On until 10th May. Book here.

France during the First World War. Nine-year-old Sylvie Lapage prays for France to be saved from the war, but her miracle arrives in the form of the new girl at school – Andrée. She is unlike anyone else – wildly bright and full of life. Finally, Sylvie has someone who makes her laugh, someone to talk to about literature, equality, war, and religion, someone to call her closest friend. As the girls become inseparable, they battle against the strictness of their sheltered Catholic bourgeois upbringing. But, as the girls grow up and face the mounting pressures of becoming a young woman, will they ever find the freedom they both hunger for? The Inseparables tells the true story of an intimate female friendship that shaped one of the most important thinkers and feminists of the 20th century.

The Playwright: Grace Joy Howarth is a playwright, author, and musician from London. Full details about Howarth’s career are on her website here.

The Novelist: Philosopher and feminist activist Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) was a major figure in the existentialist movement and intellectual world of post-war France. She was also the life-long partner of the existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. The Inseparables is a semi-autobiographical novella based on de Beauvoir’s devoted childhood friendship with Elisabeth Lacoin, known as Zaza. The novella, which was written in 1954, was not published during de Beauvoir’s lifetime – largely because Sartre damned it as “too intimate”, but it was rediscovered and published by Penguin in 2020. This production is its first adaptation for the stage.

The Director: Anastasia Bunce returns to the Finborough Theatre after directing the critically acclaimed Off-West End Award nominated Darkie Armo Girl in 2022. Previous direction includes Blood On Your Hands, Meat Cute and Birdie’s Adventures in the Animal Kingdom. She is the Artistic Director of Patch Plays, a company devoted to staging new work that explores animal ethics and climate change.

The Players

Ayesha Ostler – Sylvie: Ostler graduated from RADA in 2024. Theatre includes Twelfth Night (Playground Theatre), As You Like It  and 12 (Greenhouse Theatre). Theatre while training includes A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Antigone, The Man of Mode, Romeo and Juliet, Light Falls, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Anatomy of a Suicide and The Winslow Boy.

Lara Menla – Andree: Lara is a French actor who trained at LAMDA. Theatre while training includes The Leftovers, Wilderness, New Labour, Emilia, Foxfinder, Much Ado About Nothing, 21 Chump Street, The Duchess of Malfi, The Children’s Hour, Design for Living and 4000 Miles. Film includes Bloody Hell, The Return and Pain. Television includes The Witcher. Audio includes Famous.

Alexandre Costet- Barmada – Pascal: Alexandre is a French actor who trained at LAMDA and La Classe Libre. Theatre includes Prix Olga Horstig 2018 (Les Bouffes du Nord, Paris). Theatre while training includes The Leftovers, Wilderness, Against, The Children, Julius Caesar, You Stupid Darkness!, The Comedy of Errors, Uncle Vanya, Beyond the Horizon, The Duchess of Malfi, Still Life and Punk Rock.

Caroline Trowbridge – Madam Gallard: Trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Theatre includes Yarn (Drayton Arms Theatre), The Unfriend (Chichester Festival Theatre), Four O’ Clock Flowers (Space Theatre), Strange Bedfellows (Producers Club, Off Off Broadway, New York City), A Slight Ache, The Lovers (European Arts Theatre Company National Tour). Film includes Four O’Clock Flowers, The Circle 2 and Northanger Abbey. Television includes Sherlock, Feather Boy, Cardiac Arrest, The House of Eliott.

The Set: In reality, the set is simply a sparse room with a table, a pale peach chaise longue, a rug and a large window fringed with lace. A few framed wall pictures and a crucifix adorn the dull walls. Yet, such is the inventiveness of this production and its players that this small space morphs into multiple locations inside your imagination. One minute it is a church at mass, an imposing school, a country home, a train carriage, a meadow for a picnic on a hot summer’s day. It is even the chilly depths of a dark river, or lake.

And – when it comes to imagination – never before has a cheap old mahogany monk’s bench settle (a storage box with an adjustable backrest that turns it into a table) been so ingeniously deployed. This piece of antique wood becomes a horse carriage, a train carriage, an altar table, as well as a seat. And the window panes turn into a film projector and the stained glass window of a  church. Five Starz to set designer Hazel Poole Zane.

 

 

 

The Review: Wildly inventive staging and exuberant performances took me on an exhausting, and at times dizzying, journey through a myriad of locations in France over many years. Phew! Huge praise to director Bunce and her production team for  impressive creative endeavours that make such “travel” possible in the barren, tight space of the Finborough. Ideas are ignited by the slightest of touches that set your imagination free.

The entire piece is carried with alacrity and energy by Ostler and Menla. As their brief biographies reveal, these actresses are in the earliest footsteps across the professional boards, so credit to each of them for delivering such text-heavy roles with focus and skill. Ostler was central to every scene, so particular note for her performance. Both women were supported ably by Barmada and Trowbridge.

I was particularly struck by the mime work of the central characters, which took the drama way beyond the room with the most modest of movements, often upon the settle: the juddering of shoulders to illustrate a ride in a bouncing horse-drawn carriage along a country lane; the swerving of their bodies to reflect the turns of a train. Name-check to Chilean movement coach Daniela Pooch. Added praise goes to Menla for her athleticism, as displayed in her underwater swimming routine and for delivering a cartwheel, back into the splits, just a few feet from the audience.

The key aspect to this production that left me as cold as the imaginary lake for Menla’s swim was the volume of the narration. As Sylvie (de Beauvoir), Ostler is the author and voice of the story. Consequently, she is expected to communicate the internal thoughts of the narrator and insight into the drama. But, far from adding context and detail, the scale of her interruptions only serves as a recurring distraction. As a scene unfolds between the actors, the viewer is just beginning to connect with the emotion when Sylvie cuts in again. It’s like watching a gripping drama on television, only to have the know-all next to you on the sofa continually piping up with background and explanation. I found myself wanting to tell Sylvie to ferme ta bouche!

Breaking the fourth wall is always a difficult trick to pull off. It is often as annoying as it is contrived and I’m disheartened to say that it is over-played in this production, to the point where it becomes an unwanted distraction. The actors deliver well, but their best efforts are left gasping for air under the weight of debris from that broken fourth wall. Some decisive editing of the narration would scoop away the masonry and set them free to act.

Three Starz