Stef Smith wrote a fascinating dystopian drama in Human Animals which showed cities of the future plagued by animal infestation. If her latest play also depicts a world trembling on the brink of change, it is altogether more positive in that it suggests women are ready to cast off their competitive singularity to become a collective force.
But, while the message is upbeat, it is one of those plays where patterned, poetic writing takes precedence over actual drama.
Smith’s two characters are female flight attendants. Often seen as stock farcical properties in plays like Boeing-Boeing, here they are long-term friends who offer soothing reassurance in the air but whose lives on the ground are unravelling. The domesticated Jane has a house – and possibly a marriage – threatened with subsidence, while the single Toni is in a relationship with an abusive boyfriend. They both, however, find consolation not just in each other but in the idea that women are rejecting male classification and raising themselves up out of the earth.
The two characters echo each other’s rhythms, engage in constant alliteration (“they stare at skylines that shine in the sun”) and at times sound like feminised versions of Beckett’s Didi and Gogo. But Waiting for Godot seems like a riot of incident compared to Smith’s play in which events are more often described than happening before our eyes.
Bryony Shanahan, incoming joint director of Manchester’s Royal Exchange, provides a physical momentum absent in the text and the two actors are skilful and well contrasted: Amanda Wright as Toni conveys a rootless insecurity while Louise Ludgate as Jane suggests someone entrapped by family life. But Smith’s whole point, even if her play is dramatically undernourished, is that when they work in unison women make an unstoppable force.
• At Traverse, Edinburgh, until 25 August.
