Diane Samuels, famous for writing Kindertransport (1993), is fascinated by the question of how you achieve a fixed identity in a shifting world. Her new play, set in a Jewish East End tailor’s in 1919, suggests postwar women had an unusual power to determine who they wished to be. But, while the play has a strong feminist theme with echoes of Sarah Waters’s Tipping the Velvet, it takes time to get to the big issue.
Of the play’s four characters, only the émigré Russian tailor who owns the shop seems to have a secure personality. Tommy, a shell-shocked war veteran and female impersonator, wrestles with the problem of finding a new theatrical persona in a changing world. But the body of the play concerns the love between Poppy, a refugee from domestic service and suffragette sympathiser, and George, a dashing young chauffeur. The problem is that it takes Poppy a whole act to realise what the audience has guessed from the start: that George is a woman in man’s apparel.
Once the secret is out, the play takes wing and produces some fascinating arguments. Poppy’s point is that the new gender politics allows women to be, and to wear, what they choose; George counters that living and dressing as a man gives her economic freedom. Erotic tension combines with social argument and, in Jennie Darnell’s production, the climactic scenes have real power. Nadia Clifford is all perky determination as the progressive Poppy and Rebecca Oldfield looks totally at ease as the galvanic George and credibly discomfited when briefly thrust back into skirts. Mark Rice-Oxley as the displaced Tommy, wanly tapping out music-hall songs on a piano, and Jacob Krichefski as the Russian tailor with a yen for the Oriental lend good support. In the end, Samuels suggests, we are what we wear. But, while the play has moments of gorgeous sensuality such as that in which Poppy swathes herself in scarlet robes, it would be even better if it cut more quickly to the chase.
- At Watford Palace theatre until 27 February. Box office: 01923 225671.
