Why Are Women Still Shortchanged In Theatre?

Theatre has its own Bechdel Test (adapted from the cinema version), even its own Twitter account, and such devices can help to prevent the worst excesses of sexism making it to the stage, but it's a blunt instrument and, well, we're reviewers and deal with subjective stuff, not scientific data crunching. So is theatre doing enough to reflect the contribution of 50% of the human race?

Though BWW tries to avoid jargon (pace Lyn Gardner in the Guardian) reviewers do use the word "underwritten" as a shorthand for a part that lacks development, characterisation and nuance - there to move the plot along, but unlike Chekhov's gun, left unfired, other parts taking over, leaving the stage with a fizzle not a bang. And, of course, almost without exception, those underwritten parts are female.

There are a variety of ways in which writers "achieve" this result. At its worst, the actress is left standing, stage left, while the men talk, waiting for the lights to go down and the scene to change. I've seen this followed up by the next scene reporting the woman taking her own life - I had to stop myself shouting, "Well, I don't blame her with this script".

If that's pretty blatant in its sidelining of the woman, less obvious are the parts that demand energetic acting and, on the surface, can appear quite substantial. But closer examination - through the inevitable rerunning of the play in the mind of the reviewer charged with writing for a reader unfamiliar with the work- raises questions about motivations and consequences and, wouldn't you know it, it's almost always a female character who leaves you wondering "Why?" and "What happened to her?" even in otherwise strong plays.

So how did we get here? Or, more cogently, why are we still here in 2017? One reason might be that so much theatre looks to revivals, to classics or to a nostalgia rooted in simpler times when men were men and, well... you get it.

It can't be just that, though, can it? Does theatre's compressed timeframe - usually, the whole story needs telling in two hours or less with no assumed knowledge on the part of the audience - and inability to access cinematic shorthand for flashbacks or big set-piece scenes mean that most characters need a bit of imported stereotyping for us to "get" them quickly enough?

Is it theatre reflecting a world in which "women's issues" are confined to daytime TV talk shows and the soaps that wrap around them - and an assumption that explicitly feminist theatre might be too risky when you need to make your money back? Or is there, at the very least, a serious lack of consideration from some writers and directors when it comes to female characters?

In an otherwise very positive review for The Last Five Years, I wrote: "Samantha Barks matches Bailey all the way in the acting and singing stakes, but her Ohio aspirant actress not quite making it in the Big Apple is somewhat underwritten, her emotional state too dependent on Jamie's career as writer and lover and her best song, 'Climbing Uphill', an account of a series of audition failures. Having seen a revival of Wonderful Town a few weeks ago (to which this musical bears some similarities) the 50 years between them appear to have set Ohio women seeking fame and fortune in New York back in terms of their agency in shaping their lives."

Nobody would say that the show fails as a result of Jason Robert Brown's writing decisions, nor that Barks was not splendid in the role, but it's an example of how attitudes can be reinforced, sliding in below the radar. There are parallels with Emma Stone's Mia in La La Land, but I would suggest that Damien Chazelle shows that Mia needed only the coincidence of opportunity and self-belief (bolstered by Ryan Gosling's Sebastian) to break the glass ceiling - the agency is all Mia's once she turns up for her fateful audition.

Another problem that surfaces more often with female roles than male led me to write this paragraph about worldwide hit Poker Face (reviewed here): "Daiva Dominyka's Pavlina doesn't know her father's identity (and might question her mother's too, since Dominyka is as tall and rangy as Parmiani is short and slight), but she impresses with her presence, even if her part is disappointingly underwritten in the last 30 minutes."

Too often, writers seem to lose interest in women; their job done, they fade away, their passion and energy seemingly sapped by chivvying the plot along towards the denouement. And there do seem to be more female suicides than male - though that's probably true in all arts - acting as a full stop for the character and a get out of jail card for the writer.

In James Bridie's 1947 play, Dr Angelus (reviewed here), a problem as old as writing itself emerges again: "Lesley Harcourt's sexpot, Mrs Corcoran, is woefully underwritten, but delivered with the confidence one can expect from an accomplished temptress."

Perhaps that was permissible 70 years ago, but should a director leave the part of a woman leading a good man astray as a one-dimensional Delilah? It's a tough one, because importing today's sensibilities into period pieces can raise the hackles of the "Political Correctness Gone Mad" brigade, but presenting women as they were written can also jar in the way that racist epithets jar on the 21st-century ear. As everyone knows, plays are made anew every time they are performed.

All three of these plays are successful, with fine writing, acting and directing, but they share an inability to round out and/or round off a female character in a way that one seldom sees when a male role is created. Maybe part of the solution lies with us reviewers who act, at least in part, as "critical friends" for creatives: we need to comment more on how women are presented on stage and hold writers and directors to high standards if their work is to carry weight in 2017.

Photo credit: Scott Rylander

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