Sussex Playwrights Reviews
Clean – The Musical
Different Theatre
Tasha’s in Brighton in the middle of the Covid pandemic, sorting her late mother’s things. She stumbles across her mother’s research on the history of the women of Brighton’s laundries – and their stories open up over three centuries, told to us by the women themselves.
The show first stepped out in 2019, winning Best New Play at the Brighton Fringe.
It began as a promenade piece in a lovely garden on the site of a laundry, and now it’s flowered out to a good two hours, newly developed for the strange new world of 2021.
It’s interwoven with a score of fourteen captivating solo and choral songs with that 60s & 70s folky protest vibe, book and lyrics by Sam Chittenden and music by Simon Scardinelli.
Blending folk, musical theatre and operatic voices, it’s an intimate show featuring seven actor/singers, some playing instruments too, plus two musicians.
The playing and singing’s gorgeous, with spine-tingling harmonies and solo performances, from raw to roar, and the natural stage and organ loft used to great advantage.
The venue enfolds us and looks terrific, a white linen-draped church, all characterful period detail. In Delphine du Barry’s design, clothes and sheets are strung across and round the space, each chair with its own label dedicated to a suffragette, and the costumes blending the iconic purple and green pallette of the suffragette movement.
The stories and histories each character shares are a revelation – there was a smallpox epidemic in Brighton in 1950. And an earlier typhoid outbreak. And so many laundries employing so many women, their sites now houses. And Sainsbury’s.
The piece flits through time – slipping through layers of time in the same place is a Chittenden motif and this new Covid-informed update has new resonance, connecting today’s front page themes of pandemics, women’s rights, women’s voices. Then and now.
Although they seldom interact, the characters are still connected together in work, refuges, campaigning and family ties through girlhood, motherhood, marriage, new independence, menopause. Each character is a compelling solo performance rather than interacting with the women of other times, their tales interweaving and echoing each other.
The men they conjure in their testimonies are uniformly awful; threatening and violent, emotionally unavailable, dismissive and discarding. It is a bleakly resigned view of relationships; and I wonder if there were any tales of supportive, unconditional love out there to be gathered into these experiences?
The show weaves rage and grief, tenderness and community spirit – and the occasional flash of fun.
It’s evolved – and there’s a sense that it could evolve again, perhaps adapting to a huge space and huge cast. It will be intriguing to see where it goes next.
The Brighton Theatre community is here today, and I spoke with more friends, both real life and new from Zoom, this afternoon than I have done in over a year, sharing our own ‘what a year’ stories before and after the event. Which just feels so right for this show.
Philippa Hammond
https://www.facebook.com/cleanthemusical/
Clean – The Musical
Different Theatre
Tasha’s in Brighton in the middle of the Covid pandemic, sorting her late mother’s things. She stumbles across her mother’s research on the history of the women of Brighton’s laundries – and their stories open up over three centuries, told to us by the women themselves.
The show first stepped out in 2019, winning Best New Play at the Brighton Fringe.
It began as a promenade piece in a lovely garden on the site of a laundry, and now it’s flowered out to a good two hours, newly developed for the strange new world of 2021.
It’s interwoven with a score of fourteen captivating solo and choral songs with that 60s & 70s folky protest vibe, book and lyrics by Sam Chittenden and music by Simon Scardinelli.
Blending folk, musical theatre and operatic voices, it’s an intimate show featuring seven actor/singers, some playing instruments too, plus two musicians.
The playing and singing’s gorgeous, with spine-tingling harmonies and solo performances, from raw to roar, and the natural stage and organ loft used to great advantage.
The venue enfolds us and looks terrific, a white linen-draped church, all characterful period detail. In Delphine du Barry’s design, clothes and sheets are strung across and round the space, each chair with its own label dedicated to a suffragette, and the costumes blending the iconic purple and green pallette of the suffragette movement.
The stories and histories each character shares are a revelation – there was a smallpox epidemic in Brighton in 1950. And an earlier typhoid outbreak. And so many laundries employing so many women, their sites now houses. And Sainsbury’s.
The piece flits through time – slipping through layers of time in the same place is a Chittenden motif and this new Covid-informed update has new resonance, connecting today’s front page themes of pandemics, women’s rights, women’s voices. Then and now.
Although they seldom interact, the characters are still connected together in work, refuges, campaigning and family ties through girlhood, motherhood, marriage, new independence, menopause. Each character is a compelling solo performance rather than interacting with the women of other times, their tales interweaving and echoing each other.
The men they conjure in their testimonies are uniformly awful; threatening and violent, emotionally unavailable, dismissive and discarding. It is a bleakly resigned view of relationships; and I wonder if there were any tales of supportive, unconditional love out there to be gathered into these experiences?
The show weaves rage and grief, tenderness and community spirit – and the occasional flash of fun.
It’s evolved – and there’s a sense that it could evolve again, perhaps adapting to a huge space and huge cast. It will be intriguing to see where it goes next.
The Brighton Theatre community is here today, and I spoke with more friends, both real life and new from Zoom, this afternoon than I have done in over a year, sharing our own ‘what a year’ stories before and after the event. Which just feels so right for this show.
Philippa Hammond
https://www.facebook.com/cleanthemusical/