Award-winning comedian Katy Brand has made her playwriting debut with 3Women, now running at Trafalgar Studios until 9 June 2018. Consensus? This is hopefully the first of many more plays to come from Brand. We’ve rounded up some of our favourite review highlights for the play and its three female leads – Anita Dobson, Debbie Chazen, Maisie Richardson-Sellers. Time to get booking before it’s sold out!
3Women explores the relationships between three generations of the same family – grandmother Eleanor (65), mother Suzanne (40) and granddaughter Laurie (18), played by Anita Dobson, Debbie Chazen and Maisie Richardson-Sellers respectively. On the eve of Suzanne’s wedding, they’re brought together in a hotel room for a night of tensions and revelations in this darkly comic and pertinent exploration of what it means to be a woman.
From generation to generation, mother to daughter, this female-led play explores what it means to be a woman in the 21st century and the consequences of the generational gap on our attitudes, cultural expectations and family dynamic. It’s directed by Michael Yale, with designs by Zahra Mansouri and lighting by Nic Farman. The premiere is produced by Stage Traffic Productions, who had a hit at the same address last year with Jordan Tannahill’s Late Company, transferred from the Finborough Theatre.
3Women runs from 15 May to 9 June 2018 at London’s Trafalgar Studios, 14 Whitehall, London SW1A 2DY. Performances are Monday to Saturdays at 7.45pm, with Thursday and Saturday matinees at 3pm. Tickets are priced £20-£30. CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE!
Review highlights
Tim Walker: “Dobson is on toe-curlingly ghastly form as the matriarch who clearly takes a sadistic pleasure in needling her middle-aged daughter… The revelation is, however, Richardson-Sellers as Laurie, the spirited third generation of the family…a wonderfully natural actress who brings life and charm to what could all too easily have become a forgettable stock character. Brand’s work is much too clever, funny and brilliantly acted to be categorised as just another ‘women’s play’. It talks to everyone because we have all, of course, come from families.”
Christie-Luke Jones: “Dobson is an acid-tongued comedic hurricane. Salty witticisms are interspersed with powerful displays of frustration, regret, melancholy, and stoicism… It’s at times a genuinely heart-breaking narrative journey, but one which ultimately hints at hope and progression, much to the credit of Brand’s meticulous construction of Eleanor and Suzanne’s pitch-perfect mother-daughter dynamic… An unequivocally funny play… a moving take on what it means to be a woman; at home, at work, and in the context of an ever-changing global conversation.”
View from the Cheap Seat – ★★★★★
Jac Bradley: “For anyone who has ever doubted if women can be funny, I would urge them to drop into the Trafalgar Studios and take in one of the few truly laugh-out-loud plays I have ever seen… Part of its power is in the proximity of the audience to the actors [in Trafalgar Studios 2]; the joy and the pain more keenly felt. The whole production is a delight from start to finish. This beautiful display of talent deserves to be seen.”
Catherine Sedgwick: “3Women presents a bold feminist point of view at a time when the issue of gender equality is at the forefront of political debate… [The play’s] success is defined by this exceptional and well-cast group of actors, as well as excellent writing and directing. Highly entertaining, hilarious, perceptive and engagingly poignant, 3Women at Trafalgar Studios is a must-see.”
Stephanie Ressort: “I had a lovely night at 3 Women. I got many therapeutic laughs from it and at 80 minutes straight through it kept me engaged… Katy Brand’s should be rightly proud of her first full-length play, 3Women. Her comedy instincts have served her well and she clearly has a flair for drama.”
Neil Durham: “Katy Brand’s new 90-minute comedy without interval is one of the funniest pieces of new writing we’ve had the pleasure to sit through at any theatre this year. Now is very much the time for a piece with three strong women leads and comedian Brand’s new play provokes plenty of laughs.”
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