Graham Smith
posted 14 July 2006

The programme contains a cut-out-and-wear dress for a cut-out woman, much like the ones you used to get in the girl's magazines. I mean, in your sister's. Not that I was looking in them, or dressing up little cut-out women or anything like that. Anyscissors, the resulting impression that this play is about the perfect woman also goes for the message within: confused and underdeveloped if not misdirected.

While it is a good production in terms of writing, acting and set design, the play warns today's single woman to be less picky with her choice of partner without any real development to back up the message. This play needed to be longer and the ending leaves much to be desired. While some would say it's good to 'leave 'em' wanting more', I say 'bollocks'.

Amanda attends the funeral of her best friend Meg only to find a selection of her exes has been invited without her knowledge, apparently to show and contrast the men that she's passed over; the chances of happiness she's missed. However, even with the cleverly engineered flashbacks, the scenes only go to show that indeed they were compatible up to a point - while Amanda remains single as she searches for the perfect romance, nothing is really shown to prove that she should have stayed with any particular man. 'If you don't choose, you lose' says the play, but any parent making the case for arranged marriages would say the same thing…

You don't feel sorry for Amanda and regret the choices she makes, unless you're a traditional misogynist, the sort of person who assumes female actors are only keeping themselves occupied with silly shows like this just until they fall pregnant. Who cares about thirtysomething spinsters anyway? Haven't we had enough of Sex in the City? If you believe in true love then you'd totally agree with Amanda and feel she's perfectly justified to trample all over the (far from perfect) men that fall at her feet. At the end of the play we never learn whether all her friend's efforts were in vain as the character of Amanda does not react, does not develop, but maintains the same line throughout. What are we supposed to learn from this? Oh right, feminism is so 1990s, I forgot.

At least the acting is faultless, I quite enjoyed seeing the difference between Sarah Fortune's Meg as teenager and adult; the men bounce off each other like the exes you would expect but again, I feel these characters also deserved more development - Meg merely invited the men to the funeral, there's no real engineering at work, nothing to suggest she had anything more planned (and whether it succeeded). The male caricatures don't give us any reason to pick a favourite - they're all weak, even when they (hilariously) square up to one another. The set, while fiddly, works efficiently and effectively. Mind you, I'm growing tired of hearing Pulp, Blur and Oasis in every other production to set the 1990s timeline - were those the only bands around?

It's as if the play had to be cut short and condensed, sacrificing Amanda's personal development for a fringe time slot - instead of an opportunity for a strong female character to stick to her guns and find true love, she walks (well, runs) off into the sunset packing proverbial blanks. Any meaning left in the play is a shot in the dark, nothing we haven't heard before, the usual noises at night that we consider for a second but casually ignore, before returning to sleep.

Till 22 July 2006.