The Puzzle Women

By Ashley Barnes

Sheffield Theatres Crucible Studio – 2/2/06

The Puzzle Women by Dead Ernest Theatre Group is based upon the activities

of a group of both men and women that have been tasked with sticking back together all the shredded documents of the Stasi, the East German State Security Service.

The Stasi spied and kept files on around 6 million East German citizens and prior to the total collapse of their regime they tore, shredded and burnt documents around the clock. Working at a rate of 10 documents a day, experts estimate that it will take 400 years to complete the task of rebuilding them.

This subject matter then should make for a very interesting play. Unfortunately what follows is at times as infuriating and downright dull as sticking a shredded piece of paper back together again.

In the programme notes the playwright Ashley Barnes admits that much of this piece comes from a series of improvisations and by heavens it certainly shows. Whilst we can see that the idea of the Puzzle Women is being used as a metaphor to speak about how we construct or reconstruct our lives, this is about as interesting as it gets.

What we are presented with is a very dull drama about a stroke victim being cared for by his daughter and her boyfriend. Robert has lost the use of speech but can still point and grunt and in this the actor Jem Dobbs does reasonably well. (Even though his performance is more Doctor Strangelove than a convincing stroke victim) Unfortunately when he is allowed to speak, through a series of flashbacks to his earlier life, this is when his performance really falls apart. Nervous, twitchy and obviously unconvinced by the script Jem fails to persuade that he was ever an academic or interesting enough to hold this play together. He doesn’t even know what to do with his hands.

Through these flashbacks we learn that the character of Robert who is British has been turned into a spy for the East Germans and is romantically involved with another member of the Starsi called Hannelore. Carlene Reed plays Hannelore as some sort of cross between Frau Blucher from Young Frankenstein and Rosa Kleb from a Bond movie, and is perhaps the most cliched of all the characters in this piece, She comes across as a stereotype from the beginning and not even some excellent acting from Ms Reed towards the end of the play can save her performance over all.

Corinne Handforth fares a little better in the acting stakes as Robert’s estranged daughter Rosa. After a shaky start, where it was obvious that she wasn’t really feeling the words, she did settle down and made a decent fist of trying to hold this play together. Unfortunately nothing could be done to overcome a very weak script that obviously needed another 4 or 5 rewrites before being in a usable state. On top of this, such are the acoustics in the Crucible Studio that most of Jem Dobbs dialogue was drown out by the shuffling of his carpet slippers across the floor. (For God’s sake man, pick your feet up!) There were also short clips of what was supposed to be documentary footage projected onto a tv screen for our delectation. These clips were obviously supposed to take the form of video confessions from those that spied for the Starsi, getting it off their chest, if you like. The second of these confessions featured an actor, using an accent so appalling that I had no idea if she was East German or a Geordie. However, for all the wrong reasons, it was the most fun I had all evening.

Adam Foster plays Lee, Rosa’s boyfriend and again fares well enough with the weakest of scripts and indeed the only entertaining section of the play featured the two younger actors on the stage. At regular intervals the main story of Robert’s life is interrupted by short scenes featuring Corinne and Adam playing two of the ‘Puzzle Women’ mentioned in the title. All their dialogue was in German, which was a bold decision, but their acting was so expressive that the audience didn’t need to fully understand what was being said. This small and developing love story between these two young people, was refreshing and funny (although it may have only seemed this way because of how truly awful the rest of it was).

In the hands of a truly great playwright like Pinter or Becket, the story of ‘The Puzzle Women’ could have been a work of art of the finest calibre. Unfortunately this is a very confused, shoddily written piece that, funnily enough, could do with shredding.

Written by Paul Tyree

www.paultyree.co.uk