Rapture, Blister, Burn, Hampstead Theatre

In Rapture, Blister, Burn, the feminist having-it-all dilemma is deconstructed using a binary plot line.  Gwen is a home maker with two sons ten years apart. Her days are spent chasing behind her boys or chivvying her inert husband, Don, the deputy Dean at a local college, who spends his evenings stoned at the PC, playing his pink oboe to an internet porn soundtrack. When an old student friend, Catherine, now a famous, foxy, unfettered, rock-chick academic, returns to the neighbourhood to care for her sick mother, the tables turn. The women swap lives. Who got it right?

Sisters are doing it to themselves

The facilitator in the plot is Don who unwittingly does exactly what's expected of him, and there are some very funny and insightful moments in Fina Gionfriddo's script, but Rapture, Blister, Burn is in the main a two hour  literature review of feminist writings. The works under consideration are the theories of Friedan, Friday and Schlafly (the anti-Christ in this trio) which interweave to provide a thin narrative thread. As Gwen returns to full time study in New York, Catherine weans Don off internet sex by going to bed in heels, watching back-to-back Bergman films and drinking him under the table. Does it necessarily follow that a student lifestyle is better than a stale and dull marriage? Watch this space. Only one person in the scenario is consistent, providing the information, intuition and intelligence that holds the story together, and that's Avery, a smart student who knows each of them well - including Don, whose role is a bit like that of a bikini model at a car show: he decorates the content but never gets to drive it.

Peter Dubois' production feels stereotyped. Emilia Fox's rock chick is flat-fronted and faux Kate Moss in skinny jeans and stilettos, and Emma Fielding's Gwen is a softly curved, apple-cheeked beauty in Capri pants and canvas shoes. The feminist says nothing when her new man refers to single mothers as 'teen sluts' - she's too busy getting her own mum to care for his kid so they can shag. When things don't happen to plan, she's declared the winner over Gwen. Feminist or misogynist?

In conclusion: The moral, it appears, is that what we get is what we want... Should-haves and could-haves are fantasies. So it wasn't really about feminism at all, it was about the life choices feminism has gifted to women: every choice has a price. Shannon Tarbet is a wonderfully assured Avery. Adam James is Don, and Polly Adams is Catherine's Martini loving mother.


References
Hampstead Theatre, Tickets

Hampstead Theatre, Eton Avenue, London NW3 3EU.  Run ends 22 February.