Behind Tamsin Oglesby's intriguing 90-minute play, commissioned by Birmingham Rep, lurks the shadow of Pinter's Old Times. But, even if the resemblances emphasise Pinter's technical mastery, Oglesby has written that relatively rare thing: a successful second play.
What separates her play from Pinter's is that her three characters are all women, old school friends shakily reunited in a French farmhouse. Em, married with two children, is seemingly the blandest of the three. Bee, her supposed best friend, is a childless, nervily brilliant logistics consultant. The unexpected guest, and catalyst amongst the pigeons, is the glamorous Chris, who was Bee's former schoolgirl tormentor and who claims to enjoy a superior intimacy with the hapless Em. What follows is a battle for ownership in which the past is not only resurrected but used as an instrument of power.
Memory is shown by Oglesby to be shifting and subjective. Bee has never forgotten, or forgiven, an incident in which she was buried alive by the sadistic Chris. For Chris, the episode was simply a collective childhood prank; what she principally recalls, and passionately envies, is Bee's gift for poetry. As Em Pinterishly observes, "we shared our past but that's not to say it's the same past."
Oglesby convincingly shows how old resentments are never buried - even if Bee was - and how adolescent female friendship, perhaps all friendship, is deeply equivocal. But, in an otherwise naturalistic play, it seems to me a mistake to give us intermittent glimpses of Bee's sub-conscious thoughts and desires. I was reminded of Groucho, parodying O'Neill's use of a similar device, crying "Pardon me while I have a strange interlude". And, in building Chris up into a destructive female Iago, Oglesby undermines the idea that she and Em could ever have enjoyed a clandestine intimacy. It makes for narrative tension but is implausible.
It remains, however, a tensely enjoyable play that shows how the present is always informed by the past. Anthony Clark's production has a gathering momentum and is exceptionally well-acted. Sara Crowe lends Chris a superficial ditziness and underlying malignity, while Eve Matheson's Bee is a high-flyer clearly full of unresolved hurts. But I was most taken with Teresa Banham as Em: she makes seeming ordina riness interesting and finally reveals a self-awareness denied to the other two. When the plays moves on to Birmingham, it will be joined by Peter Tinniswood's On the Whole it's Been Jolly Good, seen at Edinburgh and performed by Leslie Phillips. They will make an uncommonly strong double-bill.
At Hampstead Theatre (0171-722 9301) until February 12. At The Door at Birmingham Rep (0121-236-4455) from February 17 to March 4
