REVIEW: ROXANA at The Bridge House Theatre, May 30-June 03

“an unsettling commentary on an eighteenth-century context …  but it’s also a really fun night at the theatre” ★★★ ½

The story of Roxana – both the original novel by William Defoe and this adaptation by Emma Cornford - is shapeless, like life, encapsulating a fair amount of seduction, several changes of name, a few marriages (some more legal than others), one or maybe two prophecies of impending death to Roxana’s loved ones (if love is the right word?), occasional repentance, and a large number of children who need to be gotten rid of. The children are, in this production, represented by a small wooden chest full of plastic dolls, and Roxana greets their arrivals and occasional premature deaths for the most part with mild exasperation. The action of the latter half of the play kicks off when one of them, having unusually lived to adulthood and desperate to be acknowledged by her mother, threatens to blow Roxana’s cover. What is Roxana willing to do to prevent this reconciliation with a resentful grown-up daughter?

The production successfully dramatizes the queasy tonal lurches of the original novel. Though often played for laughs, the plot follows two women, Roxana and her maid Amy, forced in various ways by their circumstances – and in some cases coercing each other - into sex work. The set is centred around a bed which folds back, in the second act, to allow the set to move fluidly between rooms in a Quaker woman’s boarding house. The bed is still there, even in this supposedly respectable setting, lurking as a reminder of Roxana’s past as (in her terms) a “whore.” The same is true of a telling pair of Turkish trousers that threaten to reveal her notorious past. Roxana’s sexual past is always intruding on her present – not least in the form of her meddling daughter.

Roxana’s attitude to sex work is never entirely clear; at one point she asks why she continues her work when she has enough to live on and the act itself has grown distasteful to her. But the accumulation of wealth clearly matters. For a twenty-first century audience, the play provides an unsettling commentary on an eighteenth-century context in which, it seems, women had to choose between virtue and freedom - and face the consequences of their choices.

       But it’s also a really fun night at the theatre. The cast is uniformly excellent. Liv Jekyll as Roxana is a versatile, sympathetic heroine who faces various setbacks with aplomb. Nansi Love as Amy is excellent as her pragmatic friend and servant. Tommy Moore and Georgie Henley-Carter play a dizzying array of (mostly) disappointing men. Juliette Artigala and Poppy Enfield are both very funny, and Enfield in particular is somehow both pathetic and sinister as the wheedling Susan, who just wants to be acknowledged by her mother.

The play is ably directed by Sophia Reed and Katherine Toy through to a conclusion that, on the night I attended, left the audience looking around, blinking, wondering whether the play had actually ended. Though we may want conclusive answers as to what Roxana actually values more – maternal love or money and respectability - in the end, isn’t the whole point that she will, as always, make her own decisions?

ROXANA

At The Bridge House Theatre, 2 High Street, Penge, SE20 8RZ

Box Office: https://thebridgehousetheatre.co.uk/shows/roxana/

Cast:

Liv Jekyll - Mrs Mary Butler / Madame de Belleau / Roxana

Nansi Love – Her Maid, Amy

Tommy Moore – Mr Trotter / Louis / The Dutch Merchant

Georgie Henley-Carter – Kind Uncle / The Prince of Hanover / Mrs

Todd

Juliette Artigala – Cruel Aunt/Lord Letchworth/Mrs Rowntree

Poppy Enfield – The Gem Valuer/Charles II/Susan Butler

Creatives:

Directors: Sophia Reed and Katherine Toy

Author: Emma Cornford

Production Design and Costume: Camilla Winter

Reviewed by Clio Doyle, playwright and Lecturer in English Literature