Review: Eight Women (Southwark Playhouse)

Eight Women is undemanding, middlebrow entertainment. In its mission statement, Borealis Theatre talks about unearthing forgotten European classics and giving them “a powerful modern voice,” but there isn’t anything profound or urgent about this comic thriller romp. However, Elgiva Field’s production, though a little hesitant at the moment, works well enough on its own terms as Agatha Christie-esque Sunday night entertainment. There are enough laughs and twists along the way to keep the audience in check.

French playwright Robert Thomas first had a hit with Eight Women in 1963, soon after his play Man Trap was acclaimed by Alfred Hitchcock. In 2002, it was adapted into a movie musical by Francois Ozon, with a very starry Gallic cast (I haven’t seen it, so can’t make any comparisons). In this new adaptation, Donald Sturrock relocates the action from rural France to some remote corner of the Home Counties and 1960 becomes 1980, but there isn’t a particularly strong sense of period apart from it all feeling quaintly dated – which is perhaps the whole point of a murder mystery setting. It’s a pity that Anna Bliss Scully’s set design of a narrow elongated stage with long strips of seating isn’t ideal, particularly if you’re sitting at the back and on the side. In the round staging would have been just right.

The plot is classic murder mystery fodder: It’s nearly Christmas and Mark Peterson, the master of the house, is found with a knife in his back (he’s purely a dramatic device as we never see him prior to his demise). The phone line has been cut, the car is disabled and it’s snowing. Cue for much hysteria, as we learn that each of the eight women in the house has a motive for wanting him dead.

Bernice Stegers is appropriately brittle as lady of the manor Goneril and Sasha Waddell’s neurotic hypochondriac Auntie Regan gets much of the best comedy (their names, however, are overly referential). Tamara Hinchco could be a little more imperious as their mother and Clara Andersson sweeps in like an icy breeze as the deceased’s sister Zinka. There are assured performances from Kate Ward as Goneril’s demure and collected elder daughter Susanna and Sophie Kennedy Clark as her precocious little sister Catherine. Completing the octet, Maxine McLoughlin and Alice Anthony are both well cast as the long serving housekeeper Maureen and sly new maid Louise.

What does Eight Women offer that a Miss Marple re-run doesn’t? There is something fun about seeing the clues unfurl right in front of your eyes and witnessing it in a group. As the film is a musical, it would be interesting to find out what the songs add and whether they accentuate the suspenseful or camp aspects of the piece – I would guess the latter.