When Florence Met Isadora

Published Thursday 2 December 2004 at 11:50 by Mark Shenton

Judith Paris puts two genuine larger than life artistic eccentrics on a collision course of mismatched aspiration and inspiration in a sweetly appealing play about two real life characters that is billed as a one act comedy drama with arias.

Florence Foster Jenkins was a singer with operatic aspirations who was variously called “the dire diva of din” and “the caterwauling countess of cacophony”. And those were some of her kinder reviews. The Margarita Pracatan of her day, she couldn’t hold a note but had a disarming sincerity in her efforts to reach them, despite a total absence of rhythm, pitch or technique.

“I’ve never seen the advantage of too much rehearsal, it exhausts me,” she’s heard to say here. But on the wonderfully evocative evidence of Valda Aviks’ hilariously pitch imperfect performance, there was obviously no point in doing so. But like so many truly bad singers she blames the pianist - Michael Roulston’s suitably startled Henry - for her shortcomings by telling him, “you really must follow me more”.

She also famously used to hold artistic soirees and Paris’ play is set in 1917 New York at one to which the legendary dancer Isadora Duncan has been invited to be the special guest. Florence is hoping that she’s going to perform but Isadora has other ideas. She wants to deliver her lecture on the Meaning of Gesture, with gestures.

Paris herself plays Duncan with a suitably florid flourish. Though the play is a sometimes uneasy mix of dramatised encounters between the characters and internal monologues from them alone, they have been lovingly brought back to life.