Real women do not behave like this: Lyonesse, at the Harold Pinter Theatre, reviewed

Lyonesse by Penelope Skinner takes a while to get going. The central character, Elaine, is a washed-up British actress (Kristin Scott Thomas) who lives in a crumbling mansion in Cornwall where she dreams of making a comeback as a movie star. She contacts a clueless researcher, Kate, and asks her to drive down from London to write a screenplay about her reclusive existence in the sticks. Kate meets Chris, a mixed-race lesbian poet who works as Elaine’s chauffeur, factotum, and companion. Chris also keeps the moths away from Elaine’s collection of 12 dead parrots, stuffed and caged.

After nearly an hour of stage time, Elaine is ready to narrate her life story with Chris on duty as her stagehand. Chris is necessary because Elaine delivers her story standing on a makeshift rostrum decked out with fairy lights, dressed as a carrion crow. These details suggest a playful satire about the pretentious delusions of ageing thesps but this show takes itself rather seriously. It’s a piece of absurdism that doesn’t know how absurd it is. The structure is feeble. Bits of information are delivered in one scene and repeated in the next. We’re twice told how to pronounce ‘Lyonesse’. The characters rarely interact properly because the script asks them to share gossip about off-stage characters who are hundreds of miles away or dead.

Here’s a sample of the snappy dialogue. While Elaine is playing the Moonlight sonata, Kate says, ‘The Moonlight sonata’ and Chris replies, ‘Yes’. Script editors are hired to excise dross like this. And the narrative has no internal coherence. Elaine claims to adore performing but she can’t explain why she worked in a sweetshop for decades while her husband directed prize-winning films and bagged a lifetime achievement award in Hollywood.