‘Clever, moving, challenging and vital’: Theatre review
TENSION: From left, Jodie (Laura Meredith), Phil (Dan McGarry), and Mike (Jonathan Raggett). Pictures by Tom Arran
Theatre review of Baby, He Loves You
By Vicky Foster
As I make my way towards Stage @TheDock, which sits, uncovered, at the junction of the Humber and the River Hull, some of the people that pass me in the gathering crowd are wearing fascinators and flowing dresses, or suits and well-shined shoes. They’re dressed for a wedding, which we’re all about to witness in the marquee that awaits us.
Inside there’s a bar, a DJ booth, tables set with fishbowls filled with fairy lights and decorated with white linen tablecloths. At the centre of the space sits a platform stage. It looks like a young woman’s bedroom, and flanking the stage are two hoops on poles. As people begin to take their seats, two young women appear. They move playfully, running around, lying on the bed together, pedalling their legs in the air, touching each other’s hair as they lean in to whisper secrets and giggle.
When people are settled, their speech becomes amplified, and we are drawn into the world of Jodie and Lucy, childhood best friends, who are in Jodie’s childhood bedroom, where she is staying with her fiancé in the weeks before her wedding.
The script is fast and funny. The characters strong, relatable and engaging. There is much admiration of Jodie in her engagement party dress before the celebration and in a preview showing of her wedding dress. She is seemingly adored by her parents, friend and fiancée alike. The word ‘perfect’ is used over and over to describe her.
Lucy, meanwhile, is painted as frivolous, fun, flighty, standing in opposition to her seemingly more sensible friend – though we learn from intimate scenes between the two women that actually they’re not so different.
At the outset, the play paints a picture of a perfectly normal, perfectly happy set of people, and this is one of the tools it uses to tell a story that is about to become much darker. Rarely have I seen such a moving depiction of the complexity and nuance involved in grooming, sexual assault and victim-blaming.
‘INCREDIBLE PERFORMANCES’: Lucy (Elle Ideson) and Jodie
The duality of the experience of gaslighting and manipulation is one that can maybe only be fully communicated to people who haven’t experienced them, through art. And Middle Child [theatre company] and Maureen Lennon [writer] have deployed their vast knowledge of artistic devices to depict it here.
The staging of the show allows it to underline the subtlety and doubt that the story provokes. The use of the space and the choreography open up elements and emotions of the characters that are only hinted at in the script.
There’s a moment just before the interval, where all of the narrative threads have been laid, where the audience is feeling an increasing sense of foreboding about what’s to come, where the mother is singing in the centre of the stage, and both younger women are dancing and moving in the hoops at either end.
THE CENTRE OF A DARKER STORY: Mike and Jodie
The movement and expression of the young women is incredibly moving, and totally at odds with anything we’ve seen explicitly played out in the dialogue. It picks up on hints and suggestions that the script has been so deftly weaving and illustrates the gulf that seems to be opening up between the young women, the way they are beginning to lose each other, and how none of the characters have consciously acknowledged this. At another point, Lucy haunts the edges of the stage, distressed and dismissed, as Jodie prepares for her wedding, distinguishing the difference between their experiences.
The device of the wedding and the idea that the audience are guests is not only an effective piece of immersion; it raises an important question for the audience too. The wedding happens when we know why Lucy is distressed and absent, and the remaining characters wander the crowd, smiling and shaking hands with the audience. This was another emotional peak for me – could I smile back at these people now, seeing what they’d just done? Would I enter into the illusion that all was well? Would politeness and a sense of occasion force me to behave in a way I also knew was wrong? All important questions when we think about the issues the play is exploring.
I would like to pick out more moments, elements of the language, the costume, the music and movement, the incredible performances by all the cast, but by Elle Ideson (Lucy) and Laura Meredith (Jodie) in particular. But I hesitate, because although Middle Child say they have no current plans to tour or re-stage the production, I’m hoping they’ll change their minds. I’d like to think many more people will get the chance to see it, so I’m going to limit the spoilers.
FAMILY DYNAMICS: Jodie and Alison (Madeleine MacMahon)
I’m a strong believer that one of the best ways to change society’s understanding of difficult experiences is through art and the stories we tell. Baby, He Loves You is an important telling of the kind of story that is all-too-often overlooked or over-simplified, and one that it remains as important as ever to tell.
On the morning after my second viewing (yes, it was so good I had to go back again to see how they’d done it), I saw Ashley Judd, the woman who started the Me Too movement, on the morning news. She was speaking in the wake of the overturning of one of the sexual assault convictions against Harvey Weinstein, a man Judd and many other women have accused of sexual assault and rape. In part of her interview, she said, “the most dangerous place in America for a woman is in her home. We know the men who assault and rape and murder us, and a lot of judges are still catching up to that reality…we still think of rape as stranger rape”.
Baby, He Loves You is giving space to ideas that it’s high time we re-examine; what kinds of real choices are we giving women in society? How are we addressing misogyny – both casual and more extreme? How can ‘lower level’ instances of misogyny and inappropriate behaviour feed into more serious crimes? But it’s doing so in a way that is also highly entertaining, funny, emotional and cathartic. That’s well worth the ticket price for any show, and I’m so proud that this work is being made and performed on our doorsteps in Hull.