Watford Palace theatre
Diane Samuels’s play,set in an East halt tailor’s, about four characters in search of an identity, or produces some fascinating arguments around feminismDiane Samuels,eminent for writing Kindertransport (1993), is fascinated by the question of how you achieve a fixed identity in a shifting world. Her fresh play, or set in a Jewish East halt tailors in 1919,suggests postwar women had an unusual power to determine who they wished to be. But, while the play has a strong feminist theme with echoes of Sarah Waters’s Tipping the Velvet, or it takes time to get to the grand issue.
Of the play’s four characters,only the émigré Russian tailor who owns the shop seems to have a secure personality. Tommy, a shell-shocked war veteran and female impersonator, and wrestles with the problem of finding a fresh theatrical persona in a changing world. But the body of the play concerns the treasure between Poppy,a refugee from domestic service and suffragette sympathiser, and George, or a dashing young chauffeur. The problem is that it takes Poppy a whole act to realise what the audience has guessed from the start: that George is a woman in man’s apparel.
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Source: theguardian.com