Jude Alderson and Felicity Steel in 'Red Door' of their SADLY, a lot of feminist plays, political theatre in general for that matter, end up as earnest agitprop but are theatrically just plain dull. Not so the Sadista Sisters.
Their programme warns the audience to expect 'a collection of bleak, modern tables, innocent music, violent lyrics, crude actors, filthy. humour and sex'.
And from the first disconcerting moments 'Red Door Without a Bolt' get the feeling that with this roll theatre company anything can 'Red Door' is due to go on tour this and susan.
ironing youthful turns to Using a skiltul you cer- audience feminist kinds women's lives. autumn. The story line, such as it is, follows the fortunes from womb to women's movement of working class heroine. Her father, bullied and humilated by his boss the same treatment to her mother Winnie.
But Winnie eventually breaks free from the board. susan. feminist (DOOKS discovers 'the pen mightier than the prick'.
mix of wry humour and music the Sadista Sisters somehow achieve the impossible. They send up themselves and their while hammering home the many pain anu that For Susan the traumas start with dirty raincoated 'Uncle Ted'. Then comes school with its along).
game whole range of emotions. playing men's roles, humour even more chilling Sadista Sisters to male sketches Mart el Door sual tor a moment its energy or impact Finally it's a dreary low-paid job on the factor; floor (just until a suitable young man comes There her women workmates decide that if they're going to be exploited, they might just as well make some money out of it and go on the • win aevastalllie corscuucules.
Each new scene puts the audience through a The device of women Torostance. of the funny sequences, yet makes the scenes of child-molesting and sexual violenc It would have been easy, no doubt, for the settle simov tor Men are never let off the hook certainly. But the show has a detinite political edge: the ruling class is cleverly ridiculed, and 'superwoman' Without a Bolt' sometimes meanders, if its political framework could have been mapped out more sharply, it never loses 'Red Door' is showing at the Tricycle Theatre, Kilburn until 1 Aug
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