Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Illona Linthwaite, Sarah Berger, Tracey-Anne Liles, Kylie Walsh, Hannah Lambsdown.

All the world really is a stage and for The Paper Birds at the Playhouse Studio, the allusion to Jaques in Shakespeare’s As You Like It as he ruminates melancholically over the seven ages of man is more than a nod, it is a great big friendly handshake that captures the very essence of six of the ages of womanhood in their production of On the One Hand.

The cramped set that the theatre goers first see as they enter the Studio space may seem confusing at first but as the play makes its way through the 75 minutes, the compartmentalisation of each woman and their dreams, their aspirations and their love soon become evident. It is certainly a very clever way of looking at life and in the case of the lives of women only serves to remind the audience that even after nearly 40 years since the Sex Discrimination Act was introduced in the U.K., women still are placed by their male counterparts, and some of their own gender as well, into tidy boxes, the allusion that to try and make a real go of life on a parity with man, to some is hindered by expectation set by others.

With four of the five cast on stage throughout, On the One Hand delved neatly between each story, between each age and their expectation, occasionally criss-crossing and having the audience enjoy the joke, serious though the message was, that no matter how hard they work at it, that far too many labels are attached to a woman’s life. Nowhere was this more exemplified than great performances by Illona Linthwaite as the ages of 60 and the elderly and Tracey-Anne Liles as the 40.

Ms. Liles showed perfectly the conundrum as at one point she was portraying the teenager’s lecturer, mother and inventor. The multiple roles cascading over her as each demand, from having to answer her daughter’s problems at University, to being the lecturer stuck with a young woman almost fixated on trying to write about the nurse in Romeo and Juliet, to the person behind the idea of the single greatest boon to saving women time in hunting down lost socks. It was a treatment that worked superbly as the pressure became too much as each new demand was followed up by more.

From teenager to a woman in her 30s regretting not making more of life and being stuck in a rut too early, from  a 60 year old to the troubling onset of dementia, Paper Birds captured the life of women everywhere in this entertaining and well-thought out production.

Ian D. Hall