The Stage

Katherine

Published Friday 5 August 2005 at 10:15 by Paul Vale

Holed up in a hotel room somewhere in the Caribbean, Katherine is desperately trying to find inspiration for a long overdue second novel. A chance meeting with an enigmatic American offers her the chance to escape and the question arises as to whether or not she can ever escape from herself.

This new one-woman play by Tom Green delves into the relatively unexplored territory of the modern fiction writer. At the opening it is very difficult to elicit sympathy for a woman who has been given a free holiday in order to work on a book she has already been paid to produce. What Green does allow us to see is Katherine’s history, the pain she has suffered and the personal anguish she faces in the present. Green’s tale is expertly told and Madeleine Howard as the eponymous heroine is magnificent in an intimate portrayal of a woman at her wit’s end.

At turns arrogant and vulnerable, Howard plays Katherine with a consummate skill. There are no attempts at Grand Guignol theatrics as may have been an option. Instead Howard, perhaps best known for her role in Emmerdale, chooses to play a very tempered Katherine with emotions bubbling just under the surface, occasionally punctuated with wry humour but which gradually burst forth in an orgy of alcohol-induced confession. Keith Washington’s direction is superbly understated, relying on a fine performer who instinctively knows how to let a good script speak for itself.