The Stage

Stars in the Morning Sky

Published Tuesday 5 August 2008 at 19:20 by Catherine Usher

At a time when Beijing is trying to project its most flattering angle to the rest of the world, this tale set in Moscow on the lead up to the 1980 Olympic Games is a revealing one.

Based on the true life purge of the city’s prostitutes, a group of working girls gather at a former mental asylum outside Moscow to sit it out while the Olympic Games are on and the seedy streets of Moscow are temporarily sanitised.

First to enter the decidedly dingy accommodation is the fragrant Laura. Emilie Patry is brilliant as the softly-spoken blonde, who has a carefully crafted nice girl image. The tragedy is that she actually is a nice girl, who describes a fantasy family of circus performers and kindly grannies rather than dwell on the life she leads.

A sharp contrast is Rachel Fishwick’s boozy Anna, complete with an alcoholic’s red nose and an angry demeanour, which she can only desensitise with vodka. Fishwick excels in the role - alternating between wild abandon and moments of clarity and compassion.

As the girls reveal their stories, it’s clear that this is Russian melancholy at its finest - drudgery, despair and depressing stories are in abundance, but the impact remains powerful throughout. Each woman represents a certain attitude towards her situation - Laura’s sometimes deluded optimism, Anna’s despair tempered by her concern for others, Maria’s (Emily Dobbs) painful naivety, and big, bad Clara’s (Siobhan McSweeney) willingness to trample on everyone to survive.

Jan Hirst as Valentina watches the girls rather helplessly as the mournful Mother Russia figure, unsure how to rescue her struggling children and doubtful of whether her intervention will help.

A final striking thing about this production is how minor the two male roles are. Apparently Jagged Fence actively strives to place “strong female characters at its centre”. It does that very successfully, but certainly knows how to test those characters - and the audience’s - strength.