UK Theatre Network

My face was the mirror of the world.

Tom Eyen's The White Whore and the Bit Player is a tightly knit journey into the psyche of a woman ten seconds before her death, when her self is divided into opposites: the sexpot character created by the movie industry, and the insecure, repressed bit player, dressed as a nun. The play challenges our perception of female roles:  The tension between public adoration and private angst, manipulative employer and desperate employee, needy child and selfish mother - battles played out by the whore and the bit player who take on different characters in each other's stories - is highly comic in a deep, absurd sense.

The orphaned girl is raised in a convent and gets married soon after leaving the care of the most unpleasant Sister Mary Agnes. After losing her husband she is trying to find a job and approaches an employment agency that specializes in “helping the virginal employee.” Because of her inexperience she is advised that becoming famous is her only career option. She signs a 65-year contract with a studio and is assigned various roles as a nun. Her religious image not being very successful with the audience the studio decides to dispose of her - the nun is killed on a freeway by a Volkswagen bus – and the easy woman is born.  

This extraordinary two-hander was first shown in New York at La Mama in 1964. Ken McClymont directs two different interpretations of the one hour play – the first remaining true to the original, and the second a contemporary adaptation. The exceptional Laura Pradelska and Helen Russell-Clark alternate as The Nun and The Whore.

Tom Eyen is best known for his 1981 Tony Award-winning Broadway musical Dreamgirls, based loosely on the lives of the members of the female vocal trio The Supremes. Eyen, the author of more than thirty plays, was an innovator in the 1960s Off-Off Broadway experimental theatre movement and formed his own company, the Theatre of the Eye. With a formula that often included strong language, daring sexual content, comedy, nudity, profanity, and social criticism, Eyen wrote such cult hits as The Dirtiest Show in Town, Why Hanna's Skirt Won't Stay Down, Sarah B.Divine, and Women behind Bars. Mainstream theatregoers became acquainted with him in 1981 when he partnered with composer Henry Krieger and director Michael Bennett to write the book and lyrics for Dreamgirls, produced on Broadway in 1981 and the biggest success of his career. The show won six Tonys, including Best Book.

There are two versions, which play on alternate evenings, the original, which is reviewed here, and a contemporary version.

 

Till 30 January Tue – Sat 7.30 pm  Sun 5 pm and 7.30 pm

Original Version 16, 18, 20, 22, 23, 26, 28 January at 7.30pm.    

Sundays 16, 23, 30 January at 5.00pm

Contemporary Version 15,19,21,25,27,29 January at 7.30pm.      

Sundays 16, 23, 30 January at 7.30pm

Both Versions 16,23, 30  £12/£10 (concessions) Price includes both shows

Tickets: £ 12 / £ 10 (concessions)

BOX OFFICE: 020 7704 6665

The Rosemary Branch, 2 Shepperton Road, London N1 3DT

WEBSITE:                      www.rosemarybranch.co.uk