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The Killing of Sister George – with extra theatrical rule-breaking

Like a young Jane Horrocks: Ada Player as Alice - Andrew Billington
Like a young Jane Horrocks: Ada Player as Alice - Andrew Billington

The Killing of Sister George, the 1968 film by Robert Aldrich (adapted from the 1964 play by Frank Marcus), is a cinematic cult favourite. Starring Beryl Reid and Susannah York, this tale of a radio actress involved in a distorted lesbian love-triangle was sold with the enticing strapline: “The story of three consenting adults in the privacy of their own home.” Its depictions of lesbian sexuality were restrained by modern standards, but they were, at the time, a bold and brave reflection of the sexual revolution of the 1960s.

By contrast, this new theatrical production by Paul Hunter (for his Told by an Idiot company, in co-production with the New Vic, Stoke-on-Trent) prefers the more chaste implications of Marcus’s original stage-drama. In place of Aldrich’s sensationalism, Hunter brings us an inventive, tongue-in-cheek reinvention of the story of the demise of Sister George, the moped-riding district nurse in a BBC radio-drama series called Applehurst. The play follows the three characters of June Buckeridge, the middle-aged alcoholic actress who plays George, her younger lover Alice McNaught, and June’s BBC radio producer Mercy Croft.

In a delightful reference to radio drama, much of the action of the play is accompanied by humorous radio sound-effects, which are here created live. Designer Lulu Tam plays wonderfully with the New Vic’s circular stage, building her set around a spiral staircase upon which actors descend and suddenly emerge. Indeed, Hunter’s production – in which Madam Xenia (Rina Fatania), a fortune-teller who warns June about her future, interacts hilariously with members of the audience – revels in the special relationship the auditorium creates between actors and spectators. The production’s many breaches of theatrical pretence, such as when actors break from character in reference to a particularly egregious sound-effect, are a joy.

Nevertheless, despite the nod-and-a-wink irony of the piece, Hunter maintains the emotional power of Marcus’s play, not least in relation to the disquieting sadomasochism of the relationship between June and Alice. That the production achieves this unlikely balance between comedy and emotion is down, to a great degree, to the talents of the fine cast. Hayley Carmichael’s June is simultaneously funny, despicable and somehow sympathetic. There are, fabulously, shades of the young Jane Horrocks in Ada Player’s beautifully tragicomic rendering of Alice, while Patrycja Kujawska’s power-dressed Mercy is an arch, brutal and seductive delight. Knowingly “meta” theatre has long been part of the cultural mainstream, sometimes drearily so. This clever and creative Sister George, however, proves that there’s life in the genre yet.


Until May 13. Tickets: 01782 717 962; newvictheatre.org.uk