The Button Jar

Buttonholed

The Button Jar

by Deborah Whitmarsh-Boyce

Sensible Footwear at the Hen and Chickens Theatre, Highbury until 25^th August

Review by Heather Moulson

This intimate venue is a welcome return for me, one I frequented constantly last year for the Camden Fringe.  We are greeted with a picture of studied disarray, the setting for The Button Jar, where two women select music on their iPhone.  It becomes clear that they are sisters and it swiftly unravels that they are coping with the loss of their mother.  Choosing music for a funeral is always contentious, and brief squabbles lead to the appropriate song being agreed.

The consistent underlying aggression is skilfully honed by Deborah Whitmarsh-Boyse as Liz, and by Sandra Hollins playing Aly, the latter having the edge on grief and anger. 

A lot of folding and sorting of clothes provides a combination of memories for a lost matriarch, one who had really held the bond, leaving two daughters to deal with the pain of separation.  However, don’t think this is a grim piece.  Despite the pathos, it has optimism and real humour.

A button jar has so much subtext.  A lot of us grew up with such an item as this, intimate and personal.  I would like to have had more connection with this heirloom, and more reminiscences connected with these very personal buttons.  I would also have liked to have known more about their late mother.  However, the coveted jar manages to sew the sisters together nicely, when they could have drifted away and the concept is cleverly conveyed.

The Button Jar is directed with sensitivity by the two actors themselves, who nicely tell the tale of the pain of a true end of an era.  The sentiment inevitably filters through as an issue for us as the audience and we felt their loss.

Sensible Footwear is a prolific all-female enterprise, ladies of a certain age.  Do look out for this engaging, entertaining and creative company.

Heather Moulson, August 2024

Photography courtesy of Sensible Footwear