They have pulled out all of the stops for the marriage of Jodie and Mike. Contained in the dockside marquee are fairly pink tablecloths, strings of lights and hoops of carnations. The visitors get raffle tickets and “simply married” Love Hearts. The bride appears to be like dreamy in white and with a bit of luck nobody will discover the bridesmaid has gone awol.
You’ll have attended simply such a union of younger professionals your self. You’ll recognise the groom’s wayward stag evening, the bride’s last-minute jitters, the daddy’s delight, the mom’s sentimentality and the irritating habits of the brand new in-laws. All are duly ticked off in Maureen Lennon’s play for Center Baby, together with the engagement occasion, the boozy costume becoming and the heart-to-hearts with the bride’s raucous finest pal.
Such familiarity is a limitation. In actual life, one wedding ceremony is just about like one other, a method that works, however on stage, it’s cosy and unsurprising. The choice of director Paul Smith to interrupt the dialogue with aerial motion and the occasional overblown ballad doesn’t make it much less so.
We starvation, due to this fact, for Lennon’s better objective, which is to name out the misogyny of the seemingly respectable blokes in Jodie’s life. Behind the family-man sheen of father Phil (Dan McGarry), with the complicity of fiance Mike (Jonathan Raggett), lies the urge to manage and exploit girls. The playful friendship of Jodie (Laura Meredith) and Lucy (Elle Ideson) shouldn’t be with out its vulgar humour, however it’s candy and harmless by comparability.
This provides grit to the soap-opera sequence of bed room exchanges, staged by designer Bethany Wells on a raised platform surrounded by the viewers’s cabaret tables, even for those who can see what’s coming by the top of the primary act. Pointless amplification flattens the actors’ performances, however Meredith and Ideson set up a heat and credible relationship, their brisk interaction reflecting shared experiences from childhood sleepovers to playground dalliances and onwards to grownup dedication. Ideson’s breakdown because the sufferer of sexual abuse is harrowing and convincing.
The bluster of the boys is much less subtly noticed, however Lennon has pertinent issues to say concerning the insidious maintain of patriarchal energy and the smokescreen of an ideal wedding ceremony.
