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Prayers and thoughts: The Inseparables @Finboroughtheatre

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The Inseparables brings Simone de Beauvoir’s posthumously published novel to life. It traces a lifelong friendship between Sylve and Andrée, two unconventional girls who grew up in a stifling world where being a woman meant getting married or entering a convent. With a quick pace and engaging performances from the two leads, it is a journey back into the 20th century that captures two unconventional women trapped in a conventional world that will have you reflecting on how much or little things have moved on in the last century. It’s currently playing at the Finborough Theatre .  We’re introduced to Sylve praying for her country, France, to be saved from the war and indoctrinated into the world of faith and obedience. But too smart for all that, her life was full of detached guilt and boredom. But when she meets Andrée, a new arrival at her school, she is struck by how different she is from everyone else. She was burned in a fire and had a passion for life that nobody else she knew...

Beautiful at the ballet: No Place For A Woman @Theatre503


No Place For a Woman combines music, movemement and storytelling to present a haunting tale on human emotions and the desire to survive. And that despite it all, everything really is beautiful at the ballet. It's currently at Theatre 503.

Written by Cordelia O'Neil, this two-hander brings out the fine detail of two women's lives that are intertwined during conflict. It is set in Poland at the end of the Second World War, but there is something universal about the themes that make you feel as if it could be any time or place during conflict.

The premise is that as allied forces are interviewing the two women a story emerges. The wife of a prison camp commandant was throwing a party and she asks her husband to get champagne. But instead he brings home a ballet dancer from the camp. And they keep her.


The two women, Annie (Ruth Gemmell), and Isabella (Emma Paetz), recount what happens next. Paetz has a survivors instinct and its clear she will do whatever it takes to stay alive. Gemmell unravels in her isolation and desperation to cling to her lonely aristocratic life. Everything seems a little hazy in their recollections and justifications for their actions. But in the fog of war anything is possible.

It's given emotion weight with underscoring by Elliott Rennie on a cello, concealed by a gauze. Sarah Readman’s lighting also splits the stage in half with a line of white light. The effect is to differentiate the sides the two women are on. But during war, it sometimes hard to tell which side people are on.

A beautiful looking production full of emotion and substance. Directed by Kate Budgen, No Place For A Woman is at Theatre 503 until 27 May.

⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎



Photos by Jack Sain


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