An Imaginative Woman is based on a short story of the same name by Thomas Hardy (1840-1928). It concerns two Victorian women's repressed and not-so-repressed longings. Mrs Ella Marchmill (Lesley Cook) and her boy Thomas come to lodge in a house by the sea with lonely Mrs Hooper (Alice Parsloe) who eventually allows them to stay in the one room she would rather they left unoccupied. But where is Mrs Hooper's husband and whose writing is (literally) on the wall? Ella's curiosity swells to full-blown fantasy whilst Mrs Hooper confronts the reality of her inner grief.

Theatregoers who love high production values, extravagant costumes and stage pyrotechnics may not be impressed by invisible doorknobs that consist only of glottal clicks and flicks of the wrist, and swishing curtains contrived from exhalations of air and swaying arms. But for people who like captivating storytelling delivered with accomplished acting, vocal and movement ability, this show will set the imagination alight.

A woman with 'artistic leanings', Ella Marchmill is in turn haughty, impulsive, coquettish and selfish - and a negligent mother. Her obsession with the poet Robert Trewe reveals the futility of falling in love with a romantic ideal, and Lesley Cook builds the character with skill, portraying at first a lonely mother simply seeking accommodation whilst her husband is abroad, and gradually becoming an absurdly-jealous love-rival who believes she has been eclipsed by another. Ella Marchmill's pretentious tendency to lapse into French, and her inability to remember Mrs Hooper's name correctly, are just a couple of examples of her many amusing, endearing and exasperating traits, and Lesley Cook's delivery of them is very entertaining.

Alice Parsloe plays Mrs Hooper most poignantly, as a woman with the dignity and restraint of someone who has learned to live through straitened times. She evokes the sense of a wry, astute mind at work in the characer, and her aching heart quite palpably as she sacrifices her husband's room at Ella's greedy and insensitive insistence. The candle-lit scenes in which she talks to her absent husband are all the more effective for their lack of hysteria. Alice Parsloe also performs a number of different characters whom Ella encounters on a pier, showcasing her versatility with various freak-show acts, and an over-the-top fortune-teller.

Through Lesley Cook's and Alice Parsloe's superb devising and design, and Clare Lindsay's intelligent direction, Shambolic Theatre's production is deliciously precise and simple, with no gesture, mime or sound feeling superfluous or under-developed. The minimal set - a suspended table-top under a white drape, a suspended gold frame for a mirror, and piles of brown books bisecting the stage to indicate 'the room' and everything outside it - leaves scope for some pleasing physical inventiveness; and the use of puppetry techniques to depict Ella Marchmill's young son, Thomas, is apt. Thomas takes the form of folded shawls, cloth, crumpled paper and even a large pebble on the beach; and it is to the credit of the ingenuity and execution by the Company that the impression comes across of a cute, mischievous little boy who is confined to the periphery of his mother's world. Emilia Brodies's expert violin-playing, seductive mezzo vocals and use of a rainstick are marvellously evocative and, in this context, just so much better than pre-recorded music. Her violin arrangements of what sound like a Celtic sea-shanty, veering from major to minor as appropriate, here and there punctuated by plucking, squealing and percussive sounds, blend with the action, and never once detract from it - something theatre music does not always achieve.

Cast Credits: (alpha order): Lesley Cook - Ella. Alice Parsloe - Mrs Hooper / Various Characters.

Company Credits: Writer - Thomas Hardy (1840-1928). Director - Claire Lindsay. Music Arrangement / Performance - Emilia Brodie. Stage Manager - Kate Reaney. Costume Designer - uncredited. Lighting Operator - Jayne Allen. Producer - uncredited. Company - Shambolic Theatre. Thanks to: Karina Garnett (puppetry direction), Merv Kaye (flyer design), Laura Turquet (photography), Roisin Cavanagh, Michael Lambourne, Theatreworks, Emily Bowman, Gerdy Rees, Dan Drury, Tom Reaney, Hi-Gloss (Lorna Hamer and Samuel Harvey).

END

(c) Tara Paulsson 2008

reviewed Wednesday 13 August 08 / Etcetera Theatre

Fringe Report (c) Fringe Report 2002-2008

www.fringereport.com