Show: Sheila’s Island
Location: Playhouse Theatre, Liverpool
Date: Tuesday April 5 2022
Time: 7.30pm
Running Time: 140 Minutes
Age Rating: 12+
Performers: Judy Flynn; Sara Crowe; Abigail Thaw & Rina Fatania
Writer: Tim Firth
Producer: Yvonne Arnaud Theatre
Director: Joanna Read
Set & Costume Designer: Liz Cooke
This is our review of Sheila’s Island at Liverpool‘s Playhouse Theatre. So, let’s take a look at Sheila’s Island!
Description Of Sheila’s Island
Apologies all around. But I’m going to start by name-dropping. That’s because I enjoyed meeting up again with Tim Firth. And all these years after interviewing him about Neville’s Island, the original play. Hasn’t he done well, all those Awards. Plus, he was mentored by Alan Ayckbourn. And he has the same gift of sending people home happy. They say “You know what, I haven’t laughed like that in absolutely years”. Only to realise, eventually, the darker ramifications.
Nor does he make the often fatal mistake of tying everything up neatly with such a big bow it covers up the reality of the situation, conversely, daring to go where others would hastily shake their heads, whether a truthful but unseemly observation to full-blown, perhaps overblown, farce.
That said, despite the balance of nifty ironies and the skewering of human foibles, such as Pretentiousness with a huge capital P, dialogue and cast were somehow not in perfect harmony. Even though the audience was having a whale of a time, I felt the witty script deserved more of a reception. One line in particular, which brought the house down in Neville’s Island, here slunk past barely noticed. But as Tim Firth has pointed out, 30 years ago, it wouldn’t have been credible to write about four women executives on a team-building exercise, and there’s nothing funny about that at all.
Analysis Of Sheila’s Island
Thing is, it’s not the stereotypes: the idiot, the incompetent, the mean girl, and the obsessive, but what the writer and ensemble do with them so that they blossom as characters not caricatures. And here we have the ladies, marooned on a deserted island in the Lakes, the bright lights of civilisation twinkling away in the distance. So the scenery is sparse and stylised, backdrop sliding apart to reveal another shore where Fay is a lookout, while the props are ingeniously re-imagined to help bolster the chances of survival and rescue – and cleverly include just one mobile phone which succumbs to damp, the others having been lost in the water. Best of all is Julie’s Tardis-like rucksack, damn near garnering a starring role all on its own.
Rina Fatania is infuriatingly entertaining as a whiny buffoon providing much of the humour, in stark contrast to the biting one-liners from the bitter, constantly frustrated Denise; that Abigail Thaw manages to garner any sympathy is a tribute to her skill. Hapless leader, bossy Sheila dithers between trying to be organised and avoiding or deflecting confrontation, and Tracy Collier does a good job replacing Judy Flynn, while Emily Jane Kerr, book in hand, takes the biscuit as it were (or she would if they had any), even if one hankered to see what Sara Crowe would have done as the frail Fay, who has to run the gamut from incompetence and sadness to the horrific.
Summary Of Sheila’s Island
Admittedly, I probably spent too much time trying to remember Neville’s Island. And as a longtime fan (remember the excellent TV series All Quiet On The Preston Front?) I should have loved to give this at least an 8/10. That was presumably the case with my companion and the rest of the audience. But any offering from Tim Firth is always worth seeing.
