saints and sinners of the stage and screen
saints and sinners of the stage and screen
She's The Bitchy One
Etcetera Theatre
18th August 2014
★★★☆☆
Photography provided by Manjeet Mann
Everyone knows that siblings fight. When you're young, this could just be part of developing your personality. But if this bickering continues into adulthood, you make all the siblings female, the dad an alcoholic, the mum terminally ill and who knows, you might have the beginnings of a semi-autobiographical one-woman play called She's The Bitchy One.
As the audience enter, we see our 30-something heroine, Manjeet Mann, reading modernist pseudo-psychology books on inner healing and the like. If that's not too wacky, she is reading to her teddy bear, who peers at the books from her lap and is nodding along knowingly. The careful scattering of books, clothes and an open suitcase hint at their significance later on, as the performance space is otherwise bare.
Mann begins by foreshadowing the dreaded birthday celebration for her sister, Nina. Initially, we would be forgiven for assuming her misgivings are as they seem, annoying distractions. The usual problems of having to pretend that everything is lovely while putting on insincere shows of affection. The writing is however good enough to hint at darker details, and as the scenes unfold, we are taken through Manjeet's trepidation for the future, mixed with context from the past.
The dislike-bordering-on-hatred for her sisters (especially Nina) comes over well, but if there is supposed to be a mixture of love or affection in with the gristle, it's stunted. It leaves us confused as to why she bothers at all - is Manjeet at odds with these people or isn't she? If she is, why does she care so much what they think? Perhaps this "bitchiness" and desire for the last word is more powerful in some people than in others.
The show includes some reference to our writer's Asian background. We are introduced to the sisters' desire to be like the models in the Littlewoods catalogue, and to be white rather than brown ("fair enough to see the freckles") - but it is unclear whether this directly informs her behaviour or the relationship between the sisters, and doesn't go far enough to comment racial pressures in Britain, if that indeed was the intention.
Our dramatis personae are portrayed with an exaggerated sarcasm akin to caricatures from Goodness Gracious Me, which does get some good laughs. The childhood memory of games in the sitting room with Mann as the confused, almost bullied, youngest one show the interaction between the sisters at its most frivolous and entertaining.
The trauma that ultimately causes friction between the grown women comes out of a "what she said at mum's funeral" scenario, and from this point on, the plot becomes predictable. The culmination at the birthday gathering in the penultimate scene unfolds with the same petty one-upmanship that has dominated the dialogue of most of the play. The question of who "the bitchy one" is left open.
The script is well-written enough to work as a short story, but as a one-woman show, it loses some of its edge. We can see all too well that the bitchiness and petty grudge-holding is the only weapon to be wielded in this very shallow world of self-deprecation and, ultimately, self-destruction. The audience might sympathise with this traumatised woman, but there is no cause for empathy or warmth for the woman who helped bring most of the issues on herself.
She's The Bitchy One opened on 18th August and runs until 19th August 2014 at the Etcetera Theatre, as part of the Camden Fringe.
Nearest tube station: Camden Town (Northern)