The Lady Gardeners are Babs Horton (writer), Deborah Edgington (director) and Julia Faulkner (performer). They are on a mission to prove that life doesn’t end after you turn 60, and their brand new show In the Lady Garden does just that. Julia plays an impressive 21 characters, as well as main character Alice. The show takes an honest and hilarious look at the lack of respect given to older women in our society. They will be bringing the brand-new show to the Edinburgh Fringe this August.
Tell us about In the Lady Garden.
Babs: At 69, [main character] Alice wonders: if she hadn’t been expelled from convent school and had sex with Keith from the sausage rolls section at the pie factory, what might her life have been? Will Alice shake off the shackles of the patriarchy and live out the rest of her days with outrageous abandon?
Was there a specific moment or event that sparked the idea for the play?
Babs: I went to see a play called God of Chaos at Theatre Royal Plymouth about online censorship. After the show they announced a competition to write a five-minute monologue about any thoughts the show had triggered – this was the moment that my play In the Lady Garden was born. I had an idea of an older, naïve woman getting into social media and encountering a very angry troll – she becomes concerned for their welfare, recognising the damaging effect that anger can have on a person. She sets out to discover where the troll lives and how she can help them. When she sees the state of the house and garden, she decides to let herself into the house with a little trick she’s seen Vera Stanhope do on the television.
My monologue was staged, and then I thought little more of it, but I couldn’t get the woman who I’d named Alice Parminter out of my head, and I decided to write her life story for my own amusement but then things snowballed. And here we are, three women over 60 making our debut at the Edinburgh Fringe.
How did you come up with the title?
Babs: Originally, the play was called Anger Management, but it became obvious that this wasn’t the right title. I was trying to come up with something new but couldn’t think of anything and then a friend of mine said, that her favourite part of the play was about intimate waxing. I remembered the first time that I’d heard the expression Lady Garden and when I learned what it meant I’d laughed my head off. That was it! I liked the image of Alice being lost in an overgrown garden. In the Lady Garden was born.
How will you encourage the younger generation to come and see In The Lady Garden?
Deborah: Lots of younger people came to see the show in Plymouth and the feedback from them was very positive. The play raises lots of questions including what it was like to be a girl born back in the 50s and 60s.
Although there has been much that has changed for the better since then, young women of today are still, unfortunately, having some of the same conversations their mothers were having especially about inequality and fairness. This is a play for older and younger women, mothers and daughters, grandmothers and granddaughters (over 16) and any man keen to come along.
How do you envision the future of the Lady Gardeners?
Babs: We’ve had such a great time working together and I don’t think this will be our last project.
We would love to take this play on tour across the UK and even further afield. We’re already talking about making new work in the future.
In The Lady Garden will be performed at 2.15pm in the Pleasance Courtyard (Bunker 1) from 31st July – 25th August (Not 13th or 20th)
Saw this play in Plymouth. Very well put together, great acting and directing. Hilarious from start to finish. Good luck in Edinburgh!