Strathpeffer Pavilion, 26 March 2010

Fiona Knowles in Women Behaving Madly.

FIONA KNOWLES has been touring one-woman plays written by MsFits Theatre Company co-founder (and award-winning playwright) Rona Munro for over a decade. Each features three women whose lives suddenly come into contact with each other, with results ranging from hilarious to hysterical. It’s been a very successful formula which has won MsFits Theatre a loyal, widespread audience.

In recent years Munro’s writing has acquired a distinctly and increasingly darker tinge, even when she’s writing for MsFits. The plot of Secrets, Lies and DIY harked back to the concentration camps of the Second World War, while there were moments in A Clucking Good Hen Night when it seemed entirely possible that one of the characters was not going to last till the curtain call.

And now, in MsFits’ latest play, the curtain goes up to reveal Bella, spotlit in ghastly green, with thunder rolling in the background, as she announces, “The first person I killed was my husband”. Yes, Bella is the darkest character Munro has yet created for MsFits; a full-blown serial killer, initially driven to mariticide in a moment of madness by decades of thoughtless neglect.

Having managed to rid herself of life’s major annoyance entirely undetected, she has continued to remove any other annoyances from her life by extreme means. As a result, the shrubbery at the bottom of her garden has become a mass grave and her scorn at the police for not having noticed the disappearance of nearly two dozen people is one of the many laugh-out-loud moments in the play.

Joyce, the warm-hearted careworker who has just been assigned to Bella’s case, is the next character on stage; she is likeable enough but it is her existing client Rita who turns out to be the somewhat unlikely star of the evening. “Different”, probably suffering from Asperger’s syndrome, it is Rita’s clear-eyed, matter-of-fact approach to life that provides those moments that are the most poignant and shot through with the sharpest humour.

Knowles’ lightning on-stage transformations from one character to the other are always impressive, but Rita is her most skilful creation to date. A word, too, for Roddy Simpson’s essential soundscapes, which deftly conjured non-existent scenery.

© Jennie Macfie, 2010

Links

• MsFits Theatre Company
• Jennie Macfie