Anne-Marie Duff returns to the stage in Some Woman at the National Theatre, delivering a strong performance in Helen Edmundson's bleak drama about the hostility and unfairness women face in society. The play, directed by Blanche McIntyre, runs until 21 November.
Duff plays Julie Robson, a school administrator and divorced mother to two grown daughters: Kate (Hannah Onslow), a brusque scientific high-flier, and Ginny (Grace Doherty), a depressive who may finally be strong enough to go to university. Julie's ex-husband Richard (Geoffrey Streatfeild) has come to action the sale of the house he left.
A Random Insult Sparks Escalation
While waiting for her train home, Julie is accosted by a young boy who asks her the time then laughingly calls her a “f***ing bitch!”. Shaken and quietly angry, she contacts his headmaster and insists he is given a talking-to. A counter-claim is then made involving the police, and events escalate very quickly.
The fear that any challenge to the countless careless incivilities of modern life will trigger a backlash – plus the particular caution about confronting a minor – is familiar to both men and women. But Julie's case compounds a lifetime lived under looming, sometimes subtle, always prevalent misogyny.
A Lifetime of Misogyny
Julie is of the generation who expected more than their working-class mothers and now suffer offhand ageism. Events around her university romance with Richard stalled her academic promise and subsequently her career choices. When he later left her for another woman and a stellar media career, chief responsibility for parenting fell on her, along with the emotional Molotovs of implacable Kate and fragile Ginny.
Asked by her (symbolically pregnant) solicitor if anything in her past might have prompted an anger towards men, Julie recalls a childhood molestation by her grandfather's friend and a life of “being groped… chased through subways, forced to have sex when I didn't want to”. Blithely, the solicitor asks if she's going through the menopause – that could be useful.
Flaws in the Writing
Much of Edmundson's writing is eloquent, particularly Julie's elucidation of her own lurch toward despair and her paean to motherhood. But some of it is clunky beyond belief from a writer who is usually adroit. “The world – the WORLD is responsible,” Julie declares at one point, apropos Ginny's psychological problems. Similarly, a scene of gathering menace between Julie and a character played by Stephen Wight is spoiled by over-emphatic, over-literal dialogue.
The police officers, the solicitor and the headmaster are barely sketched in. Julie's daughters and her ex aren't much more fully fleshed. McIntyre seems happy for each to riff on a single emotional trope.
Which means Some Woman is effectively a vehicle for a single idea – that women, the bringers of life, are hated by men – expressed through Duff. And she mostly does it beautifully, though some of the more indigestible speeches seem to stick in her throat. The critic notes the play made him feel guilty and ashamed on behalf of his gender, loving Duff's performance but not entirely buying it.
