Ladies Down Under

Warm Comedy, Warmer Weather

Ladies Down Under

by Amanda Whittington

BCP at the OSO Arts Centre, Barnes until 20^th July

Review by Andrew Lawston

Amanda Whittington’s play Ladies’ Day appeared to have a happy ending, as four friends from a fish-packing factory in Hull visited Ascot and won half a million pounds in a six race accumulator bet. But what comes after the happy ending?

This sequel, Ladies Down Under, is in part an exploration of how different people might deal with a dramatic change in their fortunes, as well as a further celebration of female friendship. This time, the four friends, still flush from their big win, decide to go on the trip of a lifetime to Australia. The OSO in Barnes is the location for this globe-trotting adventure.

Director Jane Gough does a great job of conveying everywhere from Manchester Airport to Uluru, via Bondi Beach. Clever back projections set the scene and, in a nice touch whenever the characters take photographs of each other, these snapshots are also projected on to the back wall. In early scenes, sound and lighting operator David Abel also manages to conjure up a convincing bush fire and cross-fades with precision between the ladies waiting to take off on their adventure, and flight attendants giving their safety briefing.

The four ladies form a credible and fun group of friends as they travel Australia in their matching bright pink t-shirts. Marie Bushell gets many of the biggest laughs as the rambunctious but forlorn Shelley, clashing entertainingly with the curiously brittle Pearl, played by Cressida Strauss. Imogen Measday’s Jan spends a great deal of the play complaining, and it’s testament to Measday’s performance that she remains such a likeable character. Elizabeth Ollier’s Linda is arguably the quietest of the quartet, but comes into her own in the play’s final scenes.

The play’s key moments are all those when the four friends are together, and other characters tend to fade in and out of the action, mostly to advance the plot.

With the ladies commanding the stage, the cast’s four male actors have a hard job to stand out against the sparse scenery, but they all do a great job. Stuart Piper opens the play with a brief but memorable turn as firefighter Tom, while Ashley Brown’s affable Joe is a delight throughout the show, wandering around Australia faintly cluelessly as a stereotypical Englishman abroad, until good Samaritan and fellow lost soul Danny befriends him over a camp fire and takes him under his wing. Danny is played by Darren Cheers, as is surf-obsessed Shane, and plays both parts with a distinct twinkle in his eye.

Ashley Brown also plays multiple roles, one as the wonderfully dry British ex-pat Charlie, a refugee from the 1960s, who sits on the beach with a very large hand-rolled cigarette and bemoans what tourists have done to his beloved surfer’s paradise. He also teams up twice with Mo Alwari for two of the play’s standout comedy moments. As the ladies wait nervously for take-off from Manchester Airport, the pair form a fantastic double act of flight attendants, giving the usual safety instructions, but with a distinct spin (on putting on oxygen masks, “if you are travelling with two children, decide which one of them you love more.”).

Towards the end of the show Alwari and Brown appear again, this time as two drag queens at a Mardi Gras celebration, and again they are visibly having wonderful fun in superb costumes from Amanda Harker and Pennie Bayliss.

As Linda observes bitterly, however, underlying everything is “the money”. The four friends have adapted to their windfall in very different ways: Shelley splurges her money on designer gear and luxury; Pearl seems to use hers to broaden her experiences and see the world; empathetic Linda feels guilty about having so much unearned money, compared to the poverty she sees around her; and Jan seems least affected, still working at the old factory, still very much trapped in her own head, convinced that her boyfriend of nearly two years has dumped her because he fails to meet them at the airport.

Ultimately the play seeks to demonstrate that friendship and simple happiness are far more important than material wealth. The four ladies are played with charm, impeccable comic timing, and great chemistry, and at the end of the two hours or so that the play lasts, you really do feel as though you’ve spent an evening among old friends.

Andrew Lawston, July 2025

Photography courtesy of BCP