Review: TALKING HEADS: AN ORDINARY WOMAN, BBC iPlayer

As part of Alan Bennett's iconic series of monologues Talking Heads, An Ordinary Woman is one of two brand new creations, written by Bennett for the revival. It shows that Bennett remains unafraid to tackle the most taboo of subjects, found in the most everyday of circumstances.

As the title suggests, we begin in the most ordinary of situations; a 46 year-old woman is unloading the washing machine in a normal kitchen. Her name is Gwen; she washes up, pops a pie in the oven. Gwen muses about her 15 year-old son Michael; how he is worried about a spot near his penis, how his hands look on a steering wheel, how he bickers with his sister Maureen.

She recalls how Michael observes that she has lost weight, that she is wearing lipstick. Is she having an affair? It quickly becomes clear that Gwen has developed unnatural feelings for her own son. Her friend Louise jokes about fancying her own son, but Gwen is always aware her own feelings are not a joke.

After confessing to a rather dismissive vicar, she reveals to the audience that her love for Michael is epic, passionate. When Michael finds out her feelings, the thin veneer of typical, domestic family life that she has tried to maintain, quickly unravels.

Sarah Lancashire plays the part of Gwen with wonderful nuance. She is totally natural and believable, despite the difficult subject matter. Lancashire portrays Gwen as quiet and measured with a deep, internal sadness. She is very much an ordinary woman, despite her extraordinary feelings.

Lancashire plays the role so carefully that she manages to elicit sympathy for the character, as well as revulsion; we cannot necessarily understand why she harbours these feelings for her son, but we see very human reactions of deep confusion at how the situation could have arisen, devastation at the disgust Michael feels when she tells him the truth and melancholy resignation that she must take her tablets and get over it.

Bennett's attention to detail is as poignant as ever; the woman prefers a piece of cheese and an apple to the family takeaway curry, she knows which shirts are ironed in the wardrobe upstairs, she doesn't know what a rolling boil is when jam is cooking. She also doesn't like her daughter or her husband very much; the focus is on her and her son.

Delicately directed by Nicholas Hytner, this is a production that appears quiet and pondering, but that also contains some truly unsettling content. The Eastenders sets have obviously been well-used for these productions, with the upstairs flat of the Queen Vic in evidence here. It is cluttered, mundane and very ordinary.

In many ways, An Ordinary Woman is quietly devastating; the amount of mental anguish that exists in the mundane is extraordinary. What is lacking here is much of Bennett's usual dark humour, but perhaps the subject matter is dark enough.

Alan Bennett's Talking Heads is now on the BBC iPlayer

Photo Credit: BBC/London Theatre Company

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