A delightful and fun exploration of sisterhood, reckoning with the past and women’s lives during and beyond motherhood, marriage, grief and menopause. This wholesome piece of theatre is full of 90’s and 00’s nostalgic music, fun physical comedy and witty relatable one liners.
Meet four of the former dancers who actually rocked up to The Monday Night Dance Club reunion:
Marion (Kate Peltzer Dunn) is the sincerest of the group, chronically optimistic, the keenest to get the gang back together. Marion and Kim (Sophie Dearlove) concoct the scheme under the guise of recording a dance video to Who Do You Think You Are dressed up as the Spice Girls for Sarah’s 50th birthday.
Sarah (Sally Best) is Kim’s sister who appears to be drifting away from her since they lost their mum the previous year. Kim, suspecting that Sarah is hiding things from her, may have other motivations for cornering her for the afternoon. Pippa (Helen Rogers), much to everyone’s disappointment, is the only other member to make it over to the little studio they’ve rented in Brighton. Having ‘escaped’ from her second barn conversion in Chipping Norton, she clearly hasn’t grown out of her petty bullying habit, particularly of the malleable Marion. A former cruise-ship dancer and pushy choreographer, she is, of course, dressing up as Posh Spice.
As the women catch up and start rehearsing, old tensions resurface, secrets are revealed and each of the girls are confronted with their past behaviour and subjective versions of events. Through petty arguments and bullying remarks on their rhythmic skills and taste in phallic cake, the women discover more common ground than they thought, bonding over their changing bodies and relationships and grief.
The dialogue is fast-paced, funny and alarmingly realistic. Each actor fully embodies Tait’s contrasting characters with such liveliness and humour whilst exploring their multifaceted humanity, preventing them from becoming caricatures. They each have their moment of comedy and their moments of reflection and growth through ensemble scenes and short vignette-like asides and duologues. As they open up to each other and push past the discomfort of guilt and lies they eventually, through petty arguments and a power cut, and one last dance to their old favourite Spice Girls number, connect. At times the build-up to these moments did feel a little over-engineered or set up for the benefit of a snippy one-liner. However there were moments of self-awareness played for humour such as when Marion keeps interrupting the sisters’ serious conversation under the guise of various transparent excuses.
For this studio theatre tour, the set is effective and compact with funky costumes, and the staging is efficient. The choice to play the dance studio mirror as the fourth wall works particularly well, allowing the audience, quite literally, a window into their world and for characters’ expressions in the mirror to be a wink to their audience.
In the last quarter of the play, the idea that mothers aren’t always rights finally manifests as the sisters reckon with the mistakes in their mum’s past, Marion reveals that the secret that sent ripples throughout Pippa’s family was exposed by her mother (not herself) and Pippa starts to come to terms with the prospect of being a grandmother. This is a beautiful full circle moment that feels big enough to take centre stage throughout the piece.
Tait explores and normalises interesting and underrepresented themes about the 21st century woman’s experience beyond the traditional successes with humour and grace. The audience’s delight in the work is clear from their pantomime-like reactions.
Who Do They Think They Are presented by Liz Tait Productions has now concluded its tour.
Written and directed by Liz Tait
Choreography by Helen Rogers
Assistant Produced by Kate Peltzer Dunn