WAITING
Kate Farrell did prove that she could still say the words and not bump into the furniture, (which consisted only of one chair) and performed her 50 minute monologue at the Edinburgh Fringe 2024. After a twenty year retirement from acting, and thirty years since she last performed on stage (Mme Arcati in Noel Coward’s 'Blithe Spirit’ at Cheltenham, for collectors of theatre trivia) she adapted her story WAITING for the stage. Audiences though not large, were attentive and appreciative. It produced a few small smiles, some tiny tears, and funds from post-show sales of the original book were donated to Marie Curie Cancer Care.
REVIEW BY IAN MANTGANI
A one-woman show written by and starring Kate Farrell as Edna Gould, an old woman waiting at the doctor’s office and talking, as old women sometimes do, in an at-length, somewhat bruised, somewhat resilient, essentially polite and rationalising ramble about all sorts of minutiae about her memories of family and her widowed life, from her daughter who married up and doesn’t really have much time for her anymore, to her gay son who ran off to London to become a celebrity hairdresser, to her late husband Len who she speaks of lovingly even while the details reveal a brooding and distant man.
There are all sorts of moving details in it, particularly the way she talks about the imprint Len left on the chair he died in, and the pride she speaks of about downsizing to a small granny flat with new furniture and central heating, as opposed to back in the old house when Len didn’t like to waste money by turning the bars up on the electric heater.
The website description advises us to “think Alan Bennett meets Roald Dahl”, and throughout it I was a little perplexed by that, as its monologuing, bittersweet style seems completely Bennett and not at all Dahl. And then there's one line, very late in the game, that upends the whole thing. It was a very clever rug-pull, and revealed Farrell to be much slyer than was possibly imaginable from her spellbindingly convincing performance, full of eyes misty with a real sense of memory and emotion conflicted by repressed manners. I did wonder if it was a bit glib for the show to make us care so much about Edna only to go for such a gag, but it really is the kind of move Dahl pulled so brilliantly in the best of the Tales of the Unexpected stories, and it recasts the whole piece with an added dimension about the unforgiving absurdity of life. This is a skilful show, and I’d be very interested to discover more of what Farrell has created.
REVIEW BY FLORENCE CRUICKSHANKS
We are all familiar with an Edna Gould, the old lady at the heart of Kate Farrell’s monologue, Waiting, produced by Farrell Productions at theSpace@Surgeon’s Hall, for the first week of the Fringe only.
She’s the old lady who talks too much because she is lonely, who remains positive despite the hard life she has had, married for over 40 years to a now deceased selfish boor, and who has now, in her senior years, attained a level of personal happiness she never knew before. This sensitively crafted monologue, set in 1997 and beautifully acted by its writer, introduces us to Edna as she is shown into her GP’s waiting room. She accepts the need to wait without complaint – the Edna Goulds of this world do not make a fuss…
The text, reminiscent of an Alan Bennett piece, introduces the characters and situations encountered in the course of a difficult life. Farrell brings revealing detail – Edna’s neglectful daughter for whom she has purchased coffee just in case of a visit – and depth of character as she recalls her evenings spent at home over the years, knitting quietly, so as not to disturb her husband’s TV viewing.
There is poetry in the writing too: the sound of rose petals falling from a vase when her husband died and it is all subtly revealed with the support of Marc Dabic, assistant director, and Stan Calder who is responsible for the effective lighting design on the bare stage.
Based on one of Farrell’s own short stories there was always going to be a sleight of hand here, a misdirection. And it is to Farrell’s credit that she delivers it very well indeed, as the prospect of Edna’s future happiness is revealed and her last card delivered with care and precision.