Opposing forces tug against each other in the new drama Some Woman at the Dorfman theatre, London, as Anne-Marie Duff delivers a magnificent performance amid playwright Helen Edmundson's implausible plotting. The result is a failed suspension of disbelief yet a convincing central performance.
Duff plays Julie, a mother, ex-wife and working woman whose already over-burdened life is turned upside down by an incident at a tube station when an 11-year-old boy randomly and aggressively insults her. She challenges him, reasonably, and in a series of unconvincing plot turns winds up facing a legal battle and potential prison sentence.
A story packed with important issues
As a story of an ordinary middle-aged woman being buffeted by patriarchal forces around her, the play is stuffed full of important issues. We hear stories of casual sexual abuse, laughed off by those around Julie. Now we see her life virtually destroyed by the boy's allegation.
There is mention of CCTV footage and you wonder if an Adolescence-style video reveal is to come. But the plot makes clear that there is no incontrovertible evidence against her, yet she stands to lose everything.
Underdeveloped characters and unfocused issues
The points about everyday misogyny come through loud and clear, especially that the legal system is rigged to distrust women and believe men (or an 11-year-old boy in this instance). The West End drama Prima Facie, recently adapted for the screen, showed us just that in relation to sexual violence against women. But this is not a courtroom drama and the alleged crimes on which it turns are simply not believable.
Directed by Blanche McIntyre and staged without an interval, there is potential brilliance here, if only the plot were better crafted and so many unfocused issues not thrown at us – from the eating disorder of one daughter (Grace Doherty) to Julie's difficult relationship with another (Hannah Onslow), both barely explored, as well as Julie's experience of infidelity and divorce. Each of these issues gets its moment, briefly, with characters around Julie too flimsy to feel true.
Moving scenes and a powerful message
The structural failings of the script aside, there are many individually moving and harrowing scenes. They culminate in a confrontation between Julie and the boy's father (Stephen Wight). Again, this plot-turn challenges the bounds of believability but this time you can brush that aside because the forces of threat, anger and fear feel horribly, sadly real.
Julie seems pushed towards victimhood yet she refuses this foisted powerlessness in a society where toxic masculinity is chillingly in plain sight: men openly express loathing of women, boys spit obscenities at female strangers. Truth is all Julie has and upholds, whatever the legal repercussions. She is not only the everyday victim of misogyny but an everyday female hero too. This message has its own power, however bad the plotting may be. At the Dorfman theatre, National Theatre, London, until 21 November.
