Cougar

by Rosie Lewenstein

seen at the Orange Tree Theatre Richmond on 2 March 2019

Chelsea Walker directs Charlotte Randle as Leila and Mike Noble as John in a new play in which Leila, an ambitious and successful woman lobbying big business to recognise and take action to mitigate climate change takes up with John, a young bartender whom she meets at a conference and takes around the world with her on the proviso that he does not demand too much of her or fall in love with her.

The escalating global crisis is a constant background to the difficult relationship between Leila and John: she is used to controlling all aspects of her life in the service of her job (which she sees as extremely valuable, and hence worthy of personal sacrifice) and perhaps is therefore fearful of too intimate a relationship at an emotional level (she is more than happy with physical intimacy); he is grateful for her attention and happy to experience the whirlwind of travel on offer, but also feels shut out and to some extent used. The imbalances of the personal encounter are perhaps not so very different from the more commonly examined situation of a powerful businessman whose wife or partner is meant only to function in the 'private' or 'domestic' sphere of his life; it's unusual and refreshing to watch a play where these stereotypical gender roles are, in effect, reversed. The problems arise, as they always do, from a perhaps chronic mismatch of priorities, and are dismayingly familiar.

Yerma

by Simon Stone after Federico Garcia Lorca

seen by live streaming from the Young Vic on 31 August 2017

Simon Stone directs his own radical re-working of Lorca's play, with Billie Piper as 'Her', Brendan Cowell as her partner John, Maureen Beattie as her mother Helen, Charlotte Randle as her sister Mary, John Macmillan as her ex-boyfriend Victor and Thalissa Teixeira as her friend Des.

The original play, written in 1934, is set in rural Spain where Yerma, a farmer's wife, is unable to bear a child in a society where childbearing is central to a woman's identity and value. It is quite a jump - but in the event largely a successful one - for Simon Stone to have reset this predicament in contemporary London (with some up-to-the-minute references to current politics), where it might be imagined that the issue of childbearing is less fraught by crippling social mores. Billie Piper's character, no longer given a name, is bubbly, self-assured, flirtatious with her indulgent partner, either unaware of or unfazed by his self-absorbed approach to intimate relationships. Only as they celebrate moving into a new (large) home in an up-and-coming but still affordable part of London, and she announces that they should think of having a child, are there hints that the two might have awkwardly different views about the prospect.