The real life experiences of British artist Barbara Tate when she became the maid of the Queen of Soho in post war London, made for a best selling book which Ken Duncum has adapted for the stage, and David O’Donnell has crafted into a theatrical event.

Tate was the maid of Mae, a legendary West End prostitute, who could turn more than 70 tricks a day at the peak of her powers.

While making a fortune and sceptical about men, Mae was still vulnerable and almost child like. Both women were outcasts, for entirely different reasons, and the relationship was a friendship, with the fiercely loyal Babs trying to protect her employer from herself, and the exploitative Tony. We also meet Mae’s gang of girls, also all on the game, none of them victims but strong women in control of their lives. These two years shaped Tate and were the foundation for her art, starting with drawings of people living in the West End.

Babs (Victoria Abbott) and Mae (Jessica Robinson) create just the right on- stage chemistry in demanding roles. Abbott shows us Babs’ transformation from ungainly kid to mature woman, while Robinson shows us the descent of Mae from an independent spirited woman to a used and abused pawn.

Gavin Rutherford, Bryony Skillington, Hayley Sproull, Paul Waggott and Heather O’Carroll each play too many roles to mention, and they play them with panache and attention to detail.

Andrew Foster’s set strikes exactly the right chord, it not only looks fantastic and makes the most of the space and seating block, it also offers the cast and director a lot of room to move. And move they do, when they’re not acting or doing costume changes, they’re doing foley work or moving things around the stage. You won’t see better ensemble work than this, under O’Donnell’s wildly and wonderfully creative direction. Credit is due also to Jane Boocock’s gorgeous costumes and Marcus McShane’s clever use of lighting.

My only issue was that I found myself more engaged in the cleverness of the staging and the quality of the acting, than in the story itself. It is an unusual choice for adaptation to the stage, but it’s been done extremely well. 

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It is remarkable that this play, which sits happily amid the ‘best of British’ fare we’ve come to expect within Circa seasons, is enjoying its world premiere in Wellington, having been adapted from UK writer/artist Barbara Tate’s memoir by local playwright Ken Duncum.  

Twenty-two years after she had worked, aged 21, as a Soho prostitute’s maid Tate completed a 160,000-word account of her experiences and observations, but shelved it when a family member objected, presumably fearing it would bring shame on them.  

Tate was 82 when she showed it to writing teacher Harry Bingham. With a colleague, he extracted and distilled the 70,000-word central story of the naïve virgin who escaped a loveless upbringing and the groping hands of a ceramics factory boss to get a job as a Soho barmaid, whence she was plucked by ‘working girl’ Mae, who was in sudden need of a new ‘maid’. But Tate didn’t live to see her story published (in July 2010) let alone become a best-seller.

Duncum read it in France, hot off the press, when he was the 2010 Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellow. Given he secured the exclusive rights to adapt West End Girls for stage performance (as reported in the Dominion Post), we can now expect it to be picked up in Britain and around the world. What a delight it will be to see the royalty traffic flowing in the opposite direction for a change.

Nothing about this adaptation betrays its origins as prose. Everything is revealed in present action. Having escaped, with her granddaughter, from an exhibition opening of her latest paintings, in high dudgeon at a trite comment made about them, an ageing Barbara finds herself back in Soho and this provokes her live action recollections.

What marks it as a particularly Kiwi adaptation is the way the five actors supporting the ‘Babs’ and Mae story cover some 62 roles (of which just 15 are named in the programme) – a value-adding skill NZ actors excel at through economic necessity. As directed by David O’Donnell, they manifest countless stair-ascending and hip-thrusting customers; people in bars, the street and court; and provide ingeniously-created sound effects for a juke box and such idiosyncrasies as the swishing of used condoms in a waste-basket and the squealing of crabs being exterminated with Blue Unction.

Another clever device, involving the back-lighting of seemingly blank white canvases, allows Titian’s ‘Sleeping Venus’ and examples of what would become Tate’s prolific output to appear at judicious moments during the play, and on a wall as we leave the auditorium (mostly marking the decades following her relatively brief but memorable sojourn in Soho).

Being a true story, it doesn’t have the dramatic subtleties or twists and turns a writer of total fiction might have introduced, so the creative staging enriches the production with physical and visual interest. Andrew Foster’s cleverly configured step-up set with mobile furniture and the afore-mentioned canvasses, lit by Marcus McShane, with authentic-looking costume designs by Jane Bookock (which avoid the immaculate fashion-parade trap) and sound designed by Gareth Hobbs conspire splendidly to evoke Barbara’s memories.

That said, the central relationship between Babs and Mae certainly does have its ups, downs, twists and turns, as challenges, confrontations and resolutions punctuate their deep and loyal if sometimes fraught friendship.

As Barbara, Victoria Abbott shows yet again what an exciting new talent she is, combining deep-felt emotional integrity with a comprehensive physicality as she sheds decades to recapture the innocent abroad who grows through experience and discovery to become her own more worldly-wise woman.

While we do learn she was abandoned by her mother to be brought up by an unloving grandmother whose ‘thou shalt nots’ repressed her as a child (for example she was not allowed out of the house on VE Day), I do feel it’s a shame the script does not reveal more about Barbara’s formative experiences. One book review quotes her memory of a violent father who carried her to an upstairs window, “strung a little noose of wire round my neck, and attached the other end to the top of the casement. I had to stand on tiptoe, because if I did not, the wire tightened round my throat and began to choke me.” But given Duncum thankfully avoids expository narration, I suppose he would have to take a lot of dramatic licence to stitch that back-story into the present action (e.g. through Babs’ reaction to Mae’s expanding into bondage and discipline).  

Jessica Robinson inhabits the role of Mae exquisitely. Her journey is from confident professional at the top of her game to emotionally dependent loser, exploited and demeaned by her ‘ponce’, Tony. She captures each mood and moment with great authenticity then leads an increasingly speedy vocal rendition of the jazz classic ‘In The Mood’ by way of depicting her marathon effort of ‘accommodating’ over 150 clients in 36 hours thanks to performance-enhancing Purple Hearts.

It’s a shame musical arranger Gareth Hobbs has not found a way of exploiting the signature ‘gag’ of the instrumental versions of ‘In The Nood’, where you think it’s all over then it starts up again … and again. That would have been very apropos. The song is happily reprised as a full ensemble finale, to give the show a valid upbeat ending that avoids mention of Mae tragically losing her life in a fire, although the staging cleverly implies she has come back from ‘beyond’ to shine once again.

What an inspired idea, though, to recreate the 1984 Pet Shop Boys synthpop hit ‘West End Girls’ (and East End boys…) as a ukulele-accompanied musical hall number, delivered busker-style by the versatile Gavin Rutherford.

In contrast to a range of light and bright bit-parts – including half of the delightful ‘Hudson & Halls’-style duo who run the Cut Price Shop that sells bulk condoms (not listed in the programme but I think they were called Harold and Spencer), and the genial Magistrate who proves the law is an ass – Rutherford brings a compelling blend of romance, menace, thuggery and vulnerability to the Maltese ponce, Tony.

Paul Waggott’s sketched-in roles include the other shopkeeper, a lascivious raincoat-wearer called ‘Pockets’ and a Scottish mugger, and he captures our hearts with lovelorn Frank, the brothel equivalent of a Stage Door Johnny.

The titular Girls are a varied bunch who mostly get to show more than one side of their characters. Their gossip sessions add background colour and context to the play’s fluidly staged series of scenes.

Heather O’Carroll’s key role is Rita, a volatile mix of foul-mouthed, strident, up for a good time and kind-hearted friend when it matters.

Having flared briefly in a spectacular cat fight (arranged by Ricky Dey) as Mae’s feisty maid Rabbits, and added social texture as a Policewoman, Bryony Skillington brings poignancy to the less-than-successful pro Hilda.

Hayley Sproull succinctly distils the 21^st century London girl as Barbara’s granddaughter Eve before deftly delineating a trio of prostitutes: hyped-up Benzi-Nell, cold-hearted Lulu the pill supplier, and Scottish Fiona. Plus she plays the piano and piano accordion.

Separating the first and second acts by a year is an astute dramaturgical decision that allows the wide-eyed discoveries of Barbara’s first impressions to be superseded by her settled-in understanding of who is who and what is what. While resisting urgings to go on the game herself, Babs nevertheless sets high standards of professionalism in her allotted role, accommodating the wants and needs of Mae and her clients, until … Suffice to say there are limits.

Besides, her desire to paint is taking over. The animation of the easel she yearns for and finally acquires is but one of the many adroit theatrical devices that give us access to Barbara’s subjective viewpoint while keeping the story humming along.

West End Girls is an ingeniously dramatised and staged adaptation which holds strong focus on its nucleus: the unlikely friendship between an unworldly virgin and a prostitute at the top of her game. It finally transcends their differences to reveal as much about what they – and all of us – have in common: a basic need for love and understanding in a diverse and sometimes dangerous world.

That all this has been achieved within a five-week rehearsal period, with just a two-day development workshop before that, is an even more astonishing achievement. In the UK or USA it would have had an out-of-town try-out and a week or more of in-town previews before its official world premiere. Here it hits the stage running well and I expect it will relax into top gear within a few days to offer an even smoother and more enjoyable ride over its dramatically undulating ground.  

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Few people in NZ would have heard of Barbara Tate, the central figure of Circa Theatre’s latest play West End Girls.  If they had it would probably have been as one of Britain’s leading women artists.  But unbeknown to many, her early life in the late 1940’s began in Soho, London, not as an art student but as a prostitute’s maid. 

Her memoirs of this time were published in 2010, and local playwright Ken Duncum has adapted them into a lively and very entertaining play.

The year is 1948 and, on first arriving in Soho, Barbara (Victoria Abbott) starts out working in a bar. She then meets Mae (Jessica Robinson), a glamorous West End prostitute known as the Queen of Soho.

The two strike up an unlikely friendship and Barbara becomes Mae’s maid.  It was her job to greet Mae’s customers, collect the money, clean and tidy, make tea for Mae and her friends and buy the supplies, including condoms by the box full.

They were two people from totally different backgrounds with opposing personalities but somehow they developed a bond, understood each other and supported each other through the highs and lows of working the streets of Soho. 

It is around this that Duncum has cleverly constructed his play evoking the time and period very theatrically.  In David O’Donnell’ superbly crafted production, this is brought to life in a fast-paced, highly innovative and creative way. 

Five actors play a multitude of characters who move in and out of Barbara and Mae’s world. They also stand around the side of the stage ingeniously providing a myriad of sound effects.

Andrew Foster’s set and AV designs evoke a real sense of the period and admirably aid the production.

While Barbara and Mae’s life was initially filled with frenetic frivolity, tensions eventually develop between the two as the darker side of prostitution emerges, which tests their friendship. And so the production follows suit, the second half much more serious and poignant in comparison the many hilarious moments in the first half.

It is to the credit of the two actors in the title roles that they are able to bring some real humanity and depth to their characters showing the changing fortunes of their lives.

Abbott’s portrayal of the prim and upright Barbara showed she had both a spirit of determination but with moments of vulnerability. Robison is the ever classy and sassy Mae, on the surface that is, but underneath fragile and easily broken.

This highly original production of a fascinating story, that is both amusing and thought provoking, is not to be missed.  

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