Review Theatre: Eight Women | Lion and Unicorn | Suzon (Jenni Brook), returns home from university to her family home in the country where her mother, sisters, aunt and grandmother reside with a nurse and housekeeper.

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The Review - THEATRE by JULIA SHIPPERLEY
Published: 5 June 2008

Eight Women at the Lion and Unicorn

Camden theatre| Eight Women | 8|
Lion and Unicorn review| Dumle Kogbara version of French film

EIGHT WOMEN
Lion and Unicorn

EIGHT Women is a comedic murder mystery expounding on some of the most extreme examples of the female psyche, displayed under duress, in circumstances involving love and loss.
Suzon (Jenni Brook), returns home from university to her family home in the country where her mother, sisters, aunt and grandmother reside with a nurse and housekeeper. Marcel, the only man of the house, the patriarch, is declared murdered in the morning and the door to his room is locked to prevent the crime scene from being altered.
With the cut phone lines and their remote location leaving them stranded without help, the investigations – and recriminations – begin in earnest.
The play takes its lead from Robert Thomas’s original, which was famously made into the French film, 8 Women, directed by François Ozon 2001. This version by director Dumle Kogbara contains the original score.
It’s best observed from the way in which the murder brings out the secrets, compulsions and prejudices of the characters. Secrets emerge and uncomfortable truths are brought into the open and acknowledged. The serious angle is that the characters must suffer as a result of the way they are destined to love.
The take on all the revelations and confrontations is frequently tongue in cheek though, and some of the play’s best moments emerge as a result of the comedy derived from the competing femmes fatales.
The confrontations between Gaby (Sylvia Andon) and her sister Pierette (Jenny Mortier) and nurse Louise (Katharine Innes) get the winning laughs, as the characters’ overbearing sexual personas clash and egos rail for supremacy over the household.
Until June 15
020 7485 9897

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