Githa Sowerby’s Rutherford and Son was performed five years back at the Lace Market Theatre. This play, The Stepmother, though a less accomplished work from the same dramatist, also deserves to be produced more frequently.
Written in 1924, the play features a young woman, initially impoverished, but gifted and hard-working. She’s inveigled into marriage by a much older man, who gains control of the substantial bequest left her by an aunt, and proceeds to lose the whole lot in rackety business ventures.
The action, which covers two periods, immediately pre and post-Great War, is separated by effective back projection showing some trench fighting.
Both central performances are compelling. Kareena Sims demonstrates her versatility, as Lois Relph, an insecure and vulnerable 19-year-old with nervous hand gestures, then later at 29, a confident, assertive and driven businesswoman.
Rob Goll is Eustace Gaydon, her husband, a domineering browbeater. (It’s entirely coincidental that he’s a near lookalike of the real-life Samuel Dougal, who married and murdered a woman for her money in 1903 in Essex).
Goll successfully steers his character away from the pantomime-villain territory almost suggested by the text.
The climactic scene of the play, and the one that best demonstrates the acting prowess of Sims and Goll, comes when Lois finally realizes the extent and depth of Gaydon’s duplicity.
There’s fine support work from Amanda Hodgson, as Aunt Charlotte, Rupert Butt (Mr Bennett, the solicitor), Linda Croston (Mrs Geddes), and Emily Shillan and Olivia Taylor (sisters Monica and Betty Gaydon).
The play’s inconclusive and therefore wholly realistic plot resolution might be seen equally as a plus or as a minus. That said, The Stepmother is an obvious go-see, if only for the quality of the central performances. But there’s a lot else to enjoy, the no-nonsense and unapologetic feminist theme for starters.
The Stepmother is at the Lace Market Theatre until Saturday. For tickets call 0115 950 7201.
