Holidaying with your parents is a funny thing – up until your teenage years it’s a cause for excitement, yet come 13? Stress, angst, arguments. Repeat on a yearly basis until you’re old enough to be left at home while your folks take a much-deserved break. But once you reach adulthood (and your familial relationships reach détente), we can once again enjoy an extended trip with our parents, right?
…right??
“Three Hens In A Boat” (directed by Abigail Pickard Price) is a road-trip hen-party story – possibly the first of its kind, and one that swaps the road for the River Thames. Claudette (Ellen O’Grady), her daughter Gloria (Verona Rose), and her daughter Jay (Camille Ucan) are all engaged to be married. Hyper-organised Jay decides an extended boat trip would make for a great hen party, and – with Claudette in high heels and Gloria’s 30 bottles of wine – they set off into the unknown. And each other’s continuous, unbroken company.
Fortunately the audience are in great company with this cast. Jay is that friend we all have who has a spreadsheet for everything, but can’t really have fun unless it’s been carefully planned in advance. By contrast, her mum Gloria is that friend we all have who’s spontaneity itself – brilliant fun until you realise it’s 3am, you’ve missed the check-in time at your hotel and you now have nowhere to sleep. While Claudette? She’s the archetypal Nan – beloved by her grandchildren, probably a little resented for that by her daughter, and broadly unaffected by the evolution of political correctness.
Each actress does a sterling job of bringing these characters to life – delivering comedy in spades (this really is a very funny play) while giving the sense that they’re harbouring secrets from each other and struggling to maintain what, it is suggested, are fractious relationships. Ucan, who also wrote the script (taking some inspiration from Jerome K. Jerome’s “Three Men In A Boat”, although you don’t need to be familiar with his story to enjoy this one) deserves credit for presenting such rounded and recognisable characters.
Road Trip tales are interesting beasts – their appeal is in the journey, the sense of freedom, the new places and people encountered by the central characters. Yet it is arguably the inner journey taken by the characters themselves which makes these stories so satisfying. Yes, I know how pretentious that sounds – but think about “Thelma and Louise” and you’ll see what I mean.
“Three Hens…” perhaps falls slightly short in the former category. Jasmin Swan’s set is striking and atmospheric, but the fixed backdrop with its unchanging imagery doesn’t give much sense of journeying through an evolving landscape. The play is perhaps a victim of its venue here, as The Watermill has so often presented toy-box sets that conjure different environments at the drop of a hat – one almost (quite unreasonably) expects this of every production. That said, the characters frequently leave the boat to explore the surrounding areas, and these exploits (relayed through hilarious anecdotes rather than depicted in themselves) do a great deal to convey a sense of adventure.
But what of that other journey, the inner journey? No family relationships are without their problems; the great test of life is whether they can survive in spite of those problems. And, to circle back to where we started, nothing test a relationship like a holiday. Will this family survive this holiday? You’ll have to watch the play to find out…
“Three Hens In A Boat” runs to the 7th June; tickets can be booked at https://www.watermill.org.uk . Photos are courtesy of Pamela Raith.
