Oxford Playhouse, Tue August 5th - Sat August 9th 2008

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Peter Tickler August 6, 2008

Anyone who dares, as Benedick West has, to put a collection of monologues on stage runs the risk of being compared - and almost by default compared unfavourably - with Alan Bennet's "Talking Heads". Gertrude's Secret is a collection of eleven such monologues. They are much shorter than Bennett's, sketches rather than short plays, and manage to be both funny and at times rather depressing in the bleak view of life they seem to take. Even so, I thoroughly enjoyed them.

Natalie Cassidy proved that there is Thespian life after Eastenders: as the cleaner Eva she demonstrated a real comic timing. Prunella Scales was as good as we all expect her to be (though certainly not in her Fawlty Towers persona). But the best was saved for last - Sion Tudor Owen playing a South African who has ended up leading Aerobics classes for the elderly. This eleventh piece has only recently been added to the stage performance, and is - as Sion told me afterwards - "work in progress". It was very funny, with pathos and a more optimistic view of humanity. An excellent end to a delightful evening.

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Gabrielle Brown August 5, 2008

Benedick West’s series of monologues is a swift and splendidly silly excursion into the lives of eleven very different individuals. Performed by a handful of quite famous British actors together with a few of lower profile, ‘Gertrude’s Secret’ is a patchwork quilt of a show with some moments of sharp wit, some of sadness and others of Carry-On like folly.

There is no connection between any of the characters’ stories, though every tale involves some form of twist; whether the character unveils some form of neuroses, divulges a secret or allows themselves to reveal their innermost insecurities. For one, Candida, she at first appears to be the perfect middle-class housewife and via a route of sexual suggestion and flirtatious comments soon reveals herself to have been having an affair with her own au pair. Another, Maureen, initially seems to be a woman in love, though her ‘relationship’ is exposed to be somewhat more ‘one-sided’ than is considered conventional (or legal, even).

West’s writing is funny and is expertly executed by the cast – the audience were often in prolonged fits of laughter. However, he frequently uses sexual innuendo as the driving force behind a great deal of the humour and relies on the audience finding sex ‘a bit naughty’. For some monologues this worked brilliantly: Natalie Cassidy, most famous for playing Sonia Fowler in Eastenders, surprised me as she absolutely sparkled on the stage, delivering daft malapropisms with perfect comic timing.

Prunella Scales as Dorothy, a mother waiting for her gown-up daughter to call her on her birthday, performed a sobering monologue; she shuffled around the stage looking dishevelled, dressed in a dowdy dressing gown and modestly conveying details of a far from perfect marriage.

It’s difficult to convey ‘Gertrude’s Secret’ as an overall experience. There were some common themes, such as the characters’ bemusement at the harsher aspects of life and oddly a frequent reference to Flash Wipes, but ultimately the performance’s strength was in its fragmentation – a broken glimpse of imperfect lives.

"Gertrude's Secret" consists of 10 little monologues supposedly in Alan Bennett's "Talking Heads" style, written by Benedick West, distant cousin, apparently, of Prunella Scales who is one of the actors labouring with this trite bit of writing. The Playhouse information says it met with acclaim in London, but I see the Guardian gave it two stars. Of course, they can't say "it was panned in london but we hope the provinces are less discriminating", now can they?

These monologues are plonkingly written, full of cliche and stuffed with innuendos so crass that I winced as I saw every one rolling in like a huge wave. "I came on the bus........(thinks: no, no...).... but I covered it up as an asthma attack" (leer). It was directed as plonkingly too. Lest one had missed the excruciating innuendo, we got a spot of visual aid to follow it up: "This new dusting tool gets into all my little crevices........ (hand on crotch). oh ha ha.

As well as pelting his audience repeatedly with this sort of humour, West managed to sneer at, patronise and stereotype every character he portrayed: malaprop cleaning lady, lascivious country lady, pramface chav, nutty old man, and several other caricatures I would rather forget. When he tried to work in a little pathos, you felt no sympathy because there was no-one believable there. When a lonely housewife brought out the knife she had used to kill her husband, it was meant to be stunning, sad - but the audience merely sniggered. After all, sniggering had been what the writer had laboured heavily at thus far.

With ten minutes per monologue, every word has to count in building a character. These characters' stories were stuffed with too many disparate bits of information; nothing was really developed. The actors did their best, but scrambled through the words as fast as possible, because frankly, none were worth lingering on. Poor souls. There ARE worse things than doing cornflakes adverts. The actor who played the South African aerobics teacher deserves praise for his stage presence and his authentic accent - a rarity. But when you have to play for laughs by getting a fat man in a tight gym suit to gyrate suggestively, things seem a bit desperate.

It only underlined what little gems Bennett's "Talking Heads" were - elegantly written, sympathetic,absorbing, and finally, touching.

Ellen Mostyn 5 Aug 2008

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