Tim Firth is associated with some excellent writing including Calendar Girls but here the dialogue does not read the room and the humour is both outdated and tone-deaf.
Judy Flynn as Sheila and Rina Fatania as Julie in Sheila’s Island | Photo © Craig Fuller
It is based on the original Neville’s Island by Firth but “reimagined” with 4 women lost on a team-building exercise in the Lake District. These stereotypical middle management women are inept, bitchy and judgemental of both mental health difficulties and Christianity.
The four women: Judy Flynn (Shelia) is saddled as Team Captain who tries to keep the peace. Alongside the ever mocking, but excellent understudy, Tracy Collier (Denise). Her intolerance of the other women is laboured and dull. The endless criticisms of Fay, played by Sara Crowe who has taken time off for mental health issues and is now a reborn Christian becomes dull and never allows her to progress past a one-dimensional character. Rina Fatania (Julie) is the health and safety manager with a rucksack full of everything possible; but the failure of her phone is a crisis.
There are old jokes around menopause, unfaithful husbands and world-weary assumptions that all middle-aged women would essentially be useless without the help of a husband or absent man who does not answer the phone.
There are occasional moments where the script attempts to look deeper but they are fleeting and often missed by poor direction or the appearance of a stagehand to deliver a plastic plate onstage during a partial blackout.
This will no doubt be a commercial success and the large audience clearly enjoyed the piece with much laughter from many.
It is just disappointing and questionable that Tim Firth would think that this script does anything to create any more than just reinforce the most basic of stereotypes.
There are women in work who do not have to be ridiculed or singled out for their beliefs, illness or tiresome menopausal jokes.
There were several empty seats following the interval which shows that there were others who saw this production as an empty vessel.
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Reviewer: Petra Schofield
Sheila’s Island is showing at the Theatre Royal in Bath until Saturday 14th May 2022.
