The Female of the Species offer- free hotel with tickets August 1, 2008
Posted by Linda in : female of the species, hotel and theatre deals, midweek, offers , add a commentThe Female of the Species is just one of the shows included in the Show and Stay summer sale. This new comedy play is doing really well in London and now you can combine it with a one night 3 star hotel stay for just the price of your tickets! That’s amazing, isn’t it? A top new London comedy and a 3* hotel from just £47.50 each?
Dates and performances
The deal is for week day evening performances between August the 1st and September the 5th.
Book Female of the Species Theatre Breaks
Check availability for Female of the species weekday performances as there are limited numbers and these tickets are selling fast. You need to book now if you want to take advantage of the free hotel offer.
** Female of The Species with Free Hotel offer **
Ooh, don’t forget, you can upgrade to a 4*hotel from an extra £10 each! And Show and Stay can save you up to 40% off your rail fare as well.
The Female of the Species Reviewed July 17, 2008
Posted by Linda in : Vaudeville, comedy, female of the species, reviews , add a commentThe Female of the Species, Vaudeville Theatre 15-07-08
The Female of the Species a comedy, opened last night at the Vaudeville Theatre. The play is ‘loosely’ based on an incident in the life of Germaine Greer. The author Joanna Murray-Smith is at pains to deny that the feminist writer at the heart of the play is based on Greer stating that she wouldn’t dare to portray her on stage. Germaine Greer begs to differ, points out that the incident itself was nearer to tragedy than farce, and is suitably outraged.
I’ve read most of Germaine Greer’s books and I’m a great admirer of her work. This made me rather uneasy but we’d been given some complementary tickets (one of the perks of blogging ) and I thought I’d go with an open mind.
There is nothing like a Dame
Dame Eileen Atkins takes the lead as Margot Mason, a famous feminist author. I’m trying here to avoid mentioning Germaine Greer again but it’s very hard. She even looks a tiny bit like her, although at least she’s not wearing one of those classic grey Greer frocks. Her performance is quite wonderful, pure class and very funny. She dominates the stage and the play showing us in turn the vast ego of the woman, her undeniable intellect and her vulnerability. Atkins mixes this with some great comic timing and some lovely, physical comedy. Even in moments when the focus was off her it was hard to drag my eyes away from her expressive face.
I think her real triumph was to take a potentially unsympathetic part and make us see Margot as very human and often actually right in her assessment of people. Atkins’ Margot is witty and smart with a tiny edge of self-doubt. Even though Margot is the focus of everyone’s anger in the play Atkins’ performance steals the show and it is the other characters who end up looking hollow and foolish.
So far so good.
I was not so happy with some of the other performances. I felt that the rest of the cast were patchy. Everyone had good moments but no one shone. Each of the characters in turn gets to have a go at Margot (by now handcuffed to her desk) and tell her just where she, and the rest of the feminist movement have gone wrong. Each tries to tell her she is to blame for the situation they find themselves in.
The two younger women, Anna Maxwell Martin (the self styled ‘homicidal intruder’) and Sophie Thompson (the ‘disappointing’ daughter) both played their parts with gusto but with a rather exaggerated use of physical ticks.
I quite enjoyed Paul Chahidi as the son -in -law. Despite the character being dense, well meaning, full of platitudes but a bit of a cardboard cut out Chahidi managed to make me feel quite sympathetic to him.
Poor Con O’Neill has a strange and amazingly short part to play, coming on only for the last 15 minutes or so as the taxi driver. He’s almost the last to speak and is made to give voice to the argument that it’s these nasty feminists who have messed up a system that’s worked fine since the time of the cave men (no - really!) Unfortunately the biggest laugh he raised the night we saw it was when he slightly corpsed in response to a line from Sophie Thomson.
There’s also a very small cameo role as Margot’s publisher for Sam Kelly right at the very end.
So is it funny?
Well, yes. There are some wonderful one liners and moments of hilarity. It’s not the great intellectual comedy, which it sort of aspires to be but it is funny. It made an interesting and enjoyable evening at the theatre. If I had paid for my ticket I wouldn’t have felt in the least bit cheated. It was a real treat to see a genuine Dame of the theatre in action.
** Find Cheap Tickets for Female of the Species**
The Female of the Species - new comedy play July 15, 2008
Posted by Andy in : Vaudeville, comedy, female of the species , add a comment
** Find Cheap Tickets for Female of the Species**
The Female of the Species
“The Female of the species” is the title of a song from Space which was a big hit in the early nineties and gets rolled out as a soundtrack to TV stories about spiders or women.
It’s also the title of a play by Joanna Murray-Smith which previews this week at the Vaudeville Theatre in London where it is set to run until October 2008. The play is an Australian export in the form of a comedy/farce which explores the roles of motherhood and celebrity feminism.
Dame Eileen Atkins plays the lead role of Margot Mason, a 1970s feminist pioneer having authored “The Cerebral Vagina” and other bestsellers.
The play was initially inspired by an event in April 2000 when Germaine Greer was “held captive in her home by a deluded young student” but that’s just a departure point for a work of fiction and Germaine Greer herself has criticised the play saying in a Sunday Times interview that “Murray-Smith is an insane reactionary who boasts that she has not read a single feminist text. She holds feminism in contempt.”
Also starring Con O’Neill (Blood Brothers) and Anna Maxwell Martin (Midsomer Murders, Doctor Who)
Is more deadly than the male.
Here’s the Space video of the young Liverpudlians performing the classic hit The female of the species
** Find Cheap Tickets for Female of the Species**
Thanks for reading London Theatre articles about female of the species
