The Stage

The Female of the Species

Published Thursday 17 July 2008 at 11:15 by Heather Neill

Legendary self-absorbed feminist Margot Mason confronts a gun-wielding fan, Molly, in her stylish country home. Molly is determined to kill the author of The Cerebral Vagina - Mason has, she says, ruined her life, having caused her mother to abandon her as a baby and jump to her death under the wheels of a train, clutching the offending publication.

The play thus begins as a witty, if over-heated, post-feminist dialogue between different generations. But then enter Tess, Mason’s daughter, whose choices - disappointing for her mother - have led her to marriage, three small children and exhaustion. Sophie Thompson’s scrawny, anguished but hilarious woman on the edge is straight out of Ayckbourn. And from now on we are in an often exasperating farce.

Australian playwright Joanna Murray-Smith, best known for Honour and inspired here by a real-life incident involving Germaine Greer, has a good line in well-observed social jokes. Tess’ agonies as a parent obliged to construct a balsa-wood cinema overnight brought howls of recognition. She has useful things to say about the state of publishing too - agony memoirs and sensationalism are the order of the day. But to make her thesis work - that everyone is confused by the outcomes of feminism - Murray-Smith’s characters have to elect themselves as stereotypes. The dim, often-absent husband who spouts correct “new man jargon”, the wife longing for the excitement of caveman maleness, the deserted husband reverting to pre-feminist type. Feminism can take a joke, but the arguments here don’t do it justice.

There are superb performances in Roger Michell’s sparky production - from Anna Maxwell Martin as jumpy, damaged Molly, from Atkins herself (despite being underused), Paul Chahidi as the dubious new man and Con O’Neill as a testosterone-maddened cabbie.