Blair Macmillan, Jennifer McEwen, Shanda Bezic & Jesse McQueen | Photo by Jack Creaghan
Presented by 1East Productions
I don’t mean to diminish the achievement that Romeo Pimp was, nor her contribution to a mostly lovely adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, but Jesse McQueen’s work on this Fringe entry (co-written with husband Jack Creaghan, which is deeply touching in context), is so exquisitely crafted, bursting with such honest humour and poignancy, the others, for me, pale in comparison to the sheer emotive power of this. Based on her own grandmother’s feisty act of domestic rebellion in 1960s Windsor, Ladies’ Day is a touching tribute and a beautiful play.
Reflecting the light with an iridescent intensity, casting an almost mythic glow onto the faces of the four women gathered about it, a square blanket lies centre stage. This represents a newly completed home pool, the pivotal symbol of reprieve from wifely duties and a hypnotic call to joyful personhood for some very busy housewives.
McQueen herself plays the central figure of Lorna, who invites some local women over to see this pool. Succumbing to the allure of the water and the temptation of Labatt’s, the foursome abandon their regular Thursday chores to get a little drunk and bond away from the expectations of husbands and children. Even more than the booze, the connection they make and meaning they find in each other, is deeply intoxicating.
Thursdays become Ladies’ Day! The monotonous pattern of their lives is conveyed through a series of ever-quickening chants, establishing the numbing routine of chores that take over their bodies until the glorious moment of release when Thursday comes around again. McQueen, Shanda Bezic, Jennifer McEwen and Blair Macmillan inhabit the space as distinct, vibrant individuals and so their group dynamic is a truly moving cumulative portrait. Their shared space is intimate yet also expansive enough to hold both the supportive energy and tension these women can finally release.
Carson Pinch is called upon to represent all the husbands of this community of women. They are a goofy, entitled bunch, yet Pinch is also sort of an adorable everyman here. Some of the husbands are more… if not progressive, at least more empathetic than others, but none of them are quite ready to let their wives exist as completely self-determining individuals if it means the odd cold casserole for dinner. Though Pinch has an overall playful vibe here, the male presence he embodies is undeniably oppressive, made all the more real because of the palpable vulnerability we sense in the subtext. These men are not bad; like their wives, they been conditioned and social expectation is a powerful force.
In the rich script and Creaghan’s attentive direction (enhanced by Bezic’s persuasive movement direction), there is a masterful balance between the stylized, expressionistic qualities of the performance and the nuanced, authentic humanity of the characters.
Adding even more complexity and social texture, McQueen and Creaghan have worked in some residual guilt here too, an awareness of privilege that haunts these women, the acknowledgement that they don’t face the same external hardships of their recent ancestors—mothers and grandmothers who survived war and want.
When the communal energy dissipates in a devastating final gesture of patriarchal authority and it seems as if all is lost, the narrative has a sneaky final note up its sleeve—a deeply satisfying, sucker punch of a button on this affecting story.
These women were so real to me. You know that rare and wonderful sensation, when you’ve been following a story and then suddenly somebody does or says something and you just lose your shit—realizing, in that moment, just how deeply invested you were? Ladies’ Day did that for me.
