Jocasta Mama and The Yellow Wallpaper
Everyman Theatre                   Thursday June 22 2006

In an innovative evening of two one act plays, Jocasta Mama and The Yellow Wallpaper, the Red Dog Theatre Company have opened up two distinctly feminist stories to a wider, non-gendered audience.
Anne Pearson’s Jocasta Mama is an uncomfortably brilliant piece of drama, searching out the emotion and sadness of those left scarred by tragedy. Following on from the Greek classic, Oedipus Rex, Ismene (Rosie Mason) and Antigone (Louise Milford) resurrect their ill-fated mother, Jocasta (Kate Abraham), in an attempt to make sense of their lives. The play beautifully re-examines that most complex of complexes, but in a twist from the norm we have an all-female perspective.
In a new adaptation of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper, Fiona Ross has produced a lavish script combining one woman’s increasing despair in triplicate. All three actresses play the same character, all on stage at the same time, mirroring and enhancing ‘The Woman’s’ descent into madness.
Like the novel, it maintains the first person narrative, but stretches it over all three voices in a sort of rolling roundelay.
Both claustrophobic and immense, the set and the intimacy of the Everyman’s other Space succeeds in uniting the audience with the actors ins the sense of foreboding and helplessness.
This was refreshing theatre full of new ideas and expertly enacted by an accomplished cast. Red Dog has set a high standard with these plays, so lets just hope they can maintain it in their next production.

Although we think of the Regency period in the frivolous pastels of Jane Austen, theatre audiences weren’t quite as decorous, as evidenced by the first rousing song from It Was A Glorious Night which implores the audience to refrain from fighting and spitting. The edict comes from one of the amazing collection of playbills held by the Cheltenham Museum And Art Gallery that formed the basis of the research and workshops held to prepare the show. Some of the acts that visited Cheltenham in the 1800s were spectacular, like the clown Dickie Usher, famous for his stage entrances (he was pulled in a carriage by 4 cats, Tibby, Tabby, Toddle and Tot).

Red Dog and Fairgame Theatre make joyful use of the material, conjuring a full programme of fabulous acts – everything from juggling to Shakespeare, to a song including a rather risqué original Regency number about a bawdy house and the amazing Peroni’s Singing Dogs. The performances are delightful and captivating, summoning the simple glee of pure entertainment, but it is the backstage shenanigans that intrigue the imagination.