CityLife

A Lady Of Substance

A Lady Of Substance
24:7 Theatre Festival 2010: Pioneer Stage
July 30, 2010

As well as fully-staged productions, this year’s 24:7 - in partnership with North West Playwrights - has also offered four writers with plays still in development the chance to try them out on the festival’s discerning audiences in script-in-hand performances.

A Lady Of Substance, by London-based Jonathan Cooper, is a close-knit sex and drugs two-hander, directed by the highly-rated Matthew Dunster, last in these parts directing 1984 at the Royal Exchange.

Mature performance poet Cassandra (Esther Hall) encounters 16-year-old Jasmine (Jenna-Louise Coleman) on a park bench and gives her a £50 note for lodgings for the night. Jasmine however has other ideas about what to do with the dosh and turns up at Cassandra’s home with enough illegal drugs to see them through the following week.

With Cassandra still haunted by the loss of her lover Laura and Jasmine determined to stick with her, the pair launch into a drug-fuelled orgy of creative poetry/rap sessions that culminates in a highly graphic sex scene.

With Dunster reading the stage directions, the two actresses give committed performances despite the limitations of the format and the piece lifts off the page with some power, assisted by some very strong language, saturation in all things being part of the play’s point.

If the piece ever makes fully-staged performances, it’ll be interesting to see how the sex scene is managed – it was quite graphic enough for me already.

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