Joy Watters is disappointed by a production filled with great potential and a tantalising opening.
At the opening night of Sharman Macdonald's play about Dundee's women workers in the 1930s, you could feel the air of excited anticipation in the predominantly female audience, waiting to join in the celebration of the distaff side of their forebears.
The vast set filling the stage suggests that this is to be an epic tribute to the women who laboured in the jute mills and were at the heart of the community. Indeed, the first main scene is a superb piece of theatre as the huge female cast fills the stage, acting out the movement and sounds of working at the looms.
It is a tantalising sequence which promises so much, but soon the material becomes irretrievably warped with plot strands heading off in all directions. There is no weft in Macdonald's script or Jemima Levick's direction to hold the material together.
Designer Alex Lowde has created a stunning set with the towering tenements, offering glimpses into the homes of the jute workers. Levick seems to have concentrated on the look of the piece rather than getting to grips with the rambling narrative.
The play's themes include Paul Robeson's visit to sing at the Caird Hall, his political sympathies, the jute workers contemplating strike action as their wages are reduced and mill closure looms, women running off to the Spanish Civil war, a family of sisters struggling to look after each other and the relationships between women generally.
There is a lot of milling about the stage, running across it and general movement to no particular end. It sums up the search for a cohesive plot that everyone in the audience is keen to share in. There needs to be a focus; it could have been on the family of girls using them as the heart of the play and then telling their story, or simply on the political activist.
It is great to see such a vast all-female cast, from professional actors, amateurs, community groups, singers to schoolchildren. All are clearly doing their best with the material they have been given; if only they had been given the chance of showing the sheer mettle of the women at the heart of the community of She Town. Dundee has provided the inspiration for some tremendous large scale productions which were taken to the hearts of the city's people. Sadly, She Town, does not continue the tradition.
At Dundee Rep until September 29.
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