REVIEW: The Country Girls

Minerva Theatre Chichester

WHEN Edna O’Brien’s novel, The Country Girls was first published in 1960’s Ireland it was met with howls of protest and promptly banned. So outraged was the still introverted and male-dominated society of the Republic that copies of the book were even burnt in the grounds of her parish church.

Modern audiences, however, should find little to shock in this mostly gentle story of two friends who forgo the boredom and restrictions of country life for the bright lights of Dublin.

To O’Brien’s first readers, Kate and Baba’s rebellion against their convent education and subsequent immersion into the temptations of the big city seemed shocking, a slur on the good name of Irish womanhood.

Today the girls’ amok-running seems tame to the point of charming.

And yet no one should underestimate the sheer brilliance of this wonderful adaptation that makes its UK premiere at Chichester this week. Superbly staged, the production lilts along rather like an Irish folk song, drawing the audience along those green-hedged country lanes and towards the grit and somewhat naïve glamour of the Irish capital.

Central to the production’s success are the girls themselves, played here by Grace Malony as the bookish dreamer Kate, and Genevieve Hulme-Beaman as the daring, racy Baba. Both young actors are fantastic finds and are seldom off stage where their chemistry is contagious.

Malony’s Kate is a secret-keeper, her relationship with her Mr Gentleman – played by Valery Schatz – never quite brought into the warm, Irish sunlight for full exposure. Hulme-Beaman gives full vent to her Baba’s desires for womanhood with an impish and at times comically seductive performance.

There is misogyny and certainly violence, which it could be said Lisa Blair’s direction here underplays in a society that treated women as second class. And the casual attitude of older men towards preying on young girls, where it should still shock and appal, is rather understated. And yet there appeared little unease among the Chichester audience.

In the end this is a simple, and yes charming tale, of two young friends coming of age in a world that no longer exists. Charming as that is, we should be grateful it has had its day.

Runs until July 8.

Ian Murray