A gutsy, cranky crack at the abundance of absurdity in the male working world. And a nightlight.
There was every reason to believe that this was just going to be another wordy show about girl bosses. But Lady’s Fingers blew all presumed semblances of a straightforward night of feminist theatre right out of the water.
Lady’s Fingers, devised by Penny Drop Productions and produced by Brave Mirror Productions, follows the story of three young women who venture into jobs in the corporate world. At first, they seem to have a good routine down: proud in their ill-fitting suits, loud about the fact that they can read, draw straight lines, and hold their breath for 45 seconds, and violently earnest in their commitment to Excel spreadsheets. When their neighbor surprises them with a plant from her garden one day, however, their masculine performance starts to crack. Confused and frustrated by this warm brush with Empathy, they begin a long but assured retreat to a safer existence as their inner children.
From the hundreds of post-it notes blanketing the stage (and not quite covering the Twilight, Bob the Builder, and Spice World movie posters) to the individual performances to the sound and lighting operator hooting quietly with laughter in the booth beside me, everything about Lady’s Fingers rang with a clear and authentic message: that the male corporate workplace is, by its own nature, absurd. And that trying to assimilate oneself to the idea that there’s something particularly worthy and noble and awesome about being manlike in any workplace is equally absurd.
The irony of the women’s journey through the corporate world is that they have to make sense of it through clown, dance, and “rehearsed” bits of hypermasculine demonstration. Most importantly, they have to navigate it together.
All three of the distinct performances from Alice Bebber, Ella Hakin, and Holly Bancroft were true highlights of the evening. For such a small venue, these three made it feel huge and entirely theirs. Embracing an intensely physical show, this cast fought tooth and nail through it, really earning the quieter moments of discovery and self-reflection toward the end.
Of particular note was the beautifully crafted relationship between the three co-working women and their nextdoor neighbor – the same one who randomly gives them the plant. We never see this character, only imagining her through the window (made of simple painter’s tape on the wall), but it is through their performances – particularly Bebber’s delicate description of her gardening at the end – that makes her feel incredibly real. It is this element of the story that roots it, keeping it safe from the confused entrails of most absurd theatre.
For all the laughter, this was not a show that took a shot at men who work in the corporate world, or men in general. In fact, most of the people in the audience who were cackling with laughter… were men. This is perhaps a testament to the countless ways in which Lady’s Fingers brilliantly subverts audience expectations of a show whose poster features three femme-presenting characters in suits. It wasn’t a play about one gender’s experience navigating a work space so much as it was about the masks society tells us to wear and how absurd it is – when you boil it down to a chaotic little stage at the Hen and Chickens Theatre – to abide by them for any more than an hour.