The Diary of a Provincial Lady
Adapted from EM Delafield by Ellie Ward who also directs
Bridge House Theatre, Penge
Star rating: 3.5
Disingenuous social commentary is almost always funny and works a treat if done with this production’s fast-paced panache. EM Delafield’s largely autobiographical and best known novel (1930) began as a series of articles for Time and Tide. Think Jane Austen (brought forward a century or so) crossed with Bridget Jones or Alison Pearson’s Kate Reddy. The things women have to deal with are ruefully, sometimes hilariously, timeless.
The titular lady reads dated extracts from her diary. Meanwhile two larger than life friends Lady Boxe (Rebecca Pickering) and Jasper Von Nimismeyer (Michael Ansley) play all the people she’s describing, occasionally retreating to their “real” characters for a chat. Cue for a huge amount of nipping in an out of hats (cleverly popped onto the heads of front row audience members when they’re not required on stage) and accents. Given that sometimes the character speaks only a single line this is an impressive feat of unfaltering slickness especially since the parts are interchangeable. Pickering can do anything from an insolent gor-blimey cook to a coyly hammy French governess, devoid of tact, and a lot more. Ansley is a treat as the diarist’s mumbling husband and many other roles. It’s very funny.
At the performance I saw, the titular Provincial Lady was played by writer/ director Ellie Ward because Becky Lumb wasn’t well enough to appear. Ward stumbled once or twice over the text but generally gave a fine performance, communicating exasperation, delight, self-awareness and wit in spades. She speaks with her eyes and her audience asides are a joy.
I spent the whole of the first half (it runs just over two hours with a 15 minute interval) thinking how unusual it is to see a play without earnest “issues”. But they arrive in the second act which is very slightly more serious. The Provincial Lady wants to work (in real life EM Delafield was an astonishingly prolific writer) and so, with reluctance, decides that her children must go to boarding school. It’s the old, very recognisable, problem of a mother being pulled in all directions. And it never goes away.
This production is a neat, richly entertaining, way of bringing an epistolary novel to stage while never letting the audience forget that it’s a diary. The continual letters from the bank manager are fun as are the many imaginatively evoked conversations.. The recorded extracts of The Lady talking to her children, do not, however, add much.
