Saturday, March 14

Tag: Bettrys Jones

The Ladies Football Club – Crucible Theatre
Yorkshire & Humber

The Ladies Football Club – Crucible Theatre

The popularity of women’s football has grown exponentially recently, bolstered by England’s back-to-back European titles. And every good movement has a good origin story behind it. And if you are thinking, “I don’t know anything about football, maybe this one isn’t for me…” then give me a couple of minutes of your time while I try to persuade you otherwise. I am not a football fan, at all. It’s not something I grew up with, and it all feels a bit alien to me. But I am a fan of women being brilliant, women telling stories, and women supporting and promoting other women, and that is what you get here. The Ladies Football Club, written by Stefano Massini and adapted for this production by Tim Firth, takes us back to the first moments of women’s football. It is World War I. Most men are ...
Red Ellen – Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh
Scotland

Red Ellen – Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh

The author (Caroline Bird) admitted that ‘this play is one interpretation… there are so many Ellens to choose from’ and in this respect the show lost pace and momentum towards the end, lingering too long on Ellen’s disappointments, professional and personal, as she stumbled, a rattling, over-worked medicine cabinet, towards death; the air of exhaustion at the conclusion of the Second World War was captured well by the blazing row between Ellen (Bettrys Jones) and Herbert Morrison (Kevin Lennon), both true and tragic, but overlooked were her incredible feats and achievements as one of less than a handful of women involved in the government and politics of the era. Scant attention was paid to her involvement with the Women’s Suffrage organisation, hardly mentioned was her first position as M...