The Stage

Two Women

Published Thursday 25 February 2010 at 12:15 by Mark Shenton

Prolific author Martina Cole has written 16 novels, and in 2008 was the biggest-selling adult fiction hardback author of the year. Several of them have been adapted for TV, including her debut novel Dangerous Lady, The Jump and The Take, but they’ve never previously had a stage treatment.

Cathy Murphy (Susan) and Laura Howard (Matty) in Two Women at Theatre Royal Stratford East Photo: Tristram Kenton

It quickly becomes apparent why, in Stratford East’s new version of her 1999 book Two Women. It’s an episodic moral tale, requiring fast changes of location and mood, and revolving around plot twists that may keep you turning the pages but are sometimes a little strained and melodramatic on the stage.

Still, it is skilfully filleted by Patrick Prior to weave interludes from the past and present. We cut between scenes set in Holloway prison, where Susan Dalston is being held after being found guilty of bludgeoning her abusive husband to death with a hammer, and those from her former life that have brought her here, to create a tense and involving narrative. It is less convincingly juxtaposed with the under-dramatised story of her cellmate Matty, who has also knifed her husband to death after his unusual sexual demands.

This story of abusive partnering - and, in Susan’s case, abusive parenting - is played out as a powerful piece of populist theatre that has a keen social conscience and a dark, gritty undertow of humanity. Ryan Romain’s production gives it a fluid transparency, and is strongly acted by Cathy Murphy and Laura Howard as the two apparent victims of their relationships, while Michael Bertenshaw and Victoria Alcock as Susan’s parents and Marc Bannerman as her husband provide convincingly harsh portraits of the people who variously damage her.

But there’s hope, too, with more sympathetic support for her from her husband’s mistress Roselle (Sally Oliver), a prison officer and defence lawyers, to provide a vivid and engaging play for today.