Review: Mrs T Foresees, Lion and Unicorn Theatre

The Lion and Unicorn Theatre is the place to go for inventive theatre and with Mrs T Foresees it keeps that great tradition going forward. Gail Matthews brings the story of one of the many Irish women who escaped the famine by embarking on the treacherous voyage to Australia, no less. We are talking about the 1840s, so dear Oz was a young colony where a life could be made a success of—or not, depending on your luck.

Matthews, back in Oz, first wrote the piece back in 1991 and has since further workshopped it. She chose as our heroine Molly Tolpuddle and it is no wonder, as hers is a fascinating story. Life is lived on the edge, brutal and inhospitable. Molly tries to fight off sexual predators and suffers the slave labour of being in service to unscrupulous middle-class ladies of the house. But dear Molly has spirit, if nothing else, and indeed ‘cultivates’ shall we say a way of communicating with them­ – for a price!

This is a logical move from reading the future where much fun is had, slightly incongruously, with getting a message across about our planet eventually heating up and another Mrs T arriving on the scene. But life being on the edge can so often lead to falling off the edge and Molly is no exception. Our by now notorious ‘Mrs T’ starts hearing voices and is sent to a lunatic asylum.

This is where the play begins as it were. The three suitably disturbing inmates played by Dottie Lubienska, Michal Nowak and Tom Barnes welcome Molly in their own inimitable way, barefoot in stained undergarments with their white faces and blacked out eyes. Old Molly (with wrapped around scarf) remembers her life, interspersed with flashbacks to scenes of her as a young woman freshly arrived (minus the scarf with hair let down). Naturally enough, our three amigos play out the myriad characters in her life. This they do with gender-bending gusto but all with that spooky black eye-makeup and their tatty underwear.

This really works: entertaining but with those dark, disturbing undertones. The conceit is not new and ever since Peter Brook’s memorable version of Peter Weiss’s Marat/Sade—who could forget Glenda Jackson as a mad inmate whipping de Sade with her hair?—it has been used, dare I say it, to death by opera and theatre directors alike.

It is however a long evening and at times it feels that its improvisatory origins have led to indulgence; the dramatic drive gets lost and the play drifts and loses its way. Scenes of Molly’s charlatan seances and her interactive mind-reading shows with audience members are fun but come far too late in the evening. The play as it stands should be cut rigorously and keep us glued to the clarity and linearity of the storytelling; there are too many needless digressions. The story is so fascinating and the character of Molly so compelling that it deserves a more focused vehicle.

I cannot fault the actors’ commitment; Carol Tagg bestrides the stage in her impressive, full-throated way while the others literally throw themselves into their various parts, while continually reminding us they are inmates of a lunatic asylum. This is so nearly an outright success and with some judicious pruning we could have a hit, as Molly’s compelling story deserves to be known.

Written and directed by: Gail Matthews
Visual creative director: Sara Curnock Cook

Mrs T Foresees plays at Lion and Unicorn Theatre until Saturday 7 June.