Some Girl(s)

Published Friday 27 May 2005 at 16:05 by Jeremy Austin

Neil LaBute’s tale of a betrothed man’s trip across America to meet up with old girlfriends and clear his conscience follows a rigid structure - man meets girl, man meets next girl, man meets next girl, etcetera - that could thrum the audience into some hypnotic torpor. But, perhaps through luck, probably through judgment, every time the production threatens to slip into some monotonous formula, LaBute throws - in the American vernacular - a curveball and produces a twist that jolts Man (David Schwimmer) along on his journey and gives definition to the woman he has met and her purpose in his quest.

The result is an engaging voyage into the mind of a misogynist afraid of commitment and whose inability to extricate himself completely from his need for a partner has left him with the gnawing doubt that somewhere in his past is the woman of his future. Schwimmer, entering to cheers from an over-appreciative audience, convincingly finds Man’s overpowering introspection and self-importance that sees him stampeding across the already damaged egos of the women he has chosen to meet and who he has hurt in the past.

Of these Sara Powell and Saffron Burrows stand out. Powell plays the free-spirited artist who has to finally admit that, although she obviously cared for Man, she was always second in his life to the woman he had left for her. That woman is Bobbi, played anxiously by Burrows, a doctor from his college days and the person whom he discovers really owns his heart.

David Grindley’s direction for the most part animates the otherwise deliberately monotonous setting of a series of hotel rooms, but fails in Catherine Tate - playing Man’s childhood sweetheart - who acted only from her waist up, splintering the otherwise slick production.