“Well written and immaculately performed and produced”

Editorial Rating: 3 Stars (Nae Bad )

The name of the late Beryl Cook (1926-2008) will be familiar to many people of a certain age. Labelled as a “naive” artist by the British art establishment, she was very well known for her works depicting plump, extrovert ladies and gentlemen enjoying themselves in pubs, at picnics, or on hen nights and the like. Her instantly recognisable personal style was so popular that she made a fortune in reproduction rights from greetings cards. A shy and private woman who shunned publicity, Cook had no formal training in art and took up the brush in her thirties and was entirely self-taught.

Cook is played by the veteran TV, film, and theatre actress Kara Wilson, who also wrote the script. Wilson met members of Cook’s family whilst researching her subject to shed light on this intriguing and enigmatic figure. No mean artist herself, this is Wilson’s fifth “painter play” as a writer, and she skilfully portrays Cook creating one of her most famous works Ladies’ Night whilst siting at a table full of paint pots and brushes.

The show successfully previewed twice earlier this year at the King Alfred Phoenix Theatre in Hampstead. As Cook/Wilson paints, she regales us with amusing anecdotes arising from the artist’s personal world: for all her shyness, Cook enjoyed a drink or two in the pubs of Plymouth, amidst their often rowdy clientele of hen nights, male strippers, and the drunken, tattooed sailors of the Royal Navy. Such a play clearly appeals to a certain demographic and looking around me, I spotted a number of ladies and gents who might well have been escapees from one of Cook’s wryly observational works. Performed in the Attic auditorium at the Pleasance Courtyard added an air of authenticity to the show, creating as it did the ambience of an artist’s studio.

There is, perhaps, a PhD thesis waiting to be written by some postgraduate Theatre Studies student on the subject of One-hour One-woman Shows at the Edinburgh Fringe; nowadays surely a major genre all of its own in the Festival calendar? This show was a fine example: well-written and immaculately performed and produced. It differs from many in this category in that it features a painter, rather than the ever-popular 19th century lady novelist, or the contemporary angst-ridden sex confessional. However, it’s a rather sedentary production; albeit necessarily so, as its protagonist paints whilst we watch and listen to her talk. One hesitates to opt for some cheap shot about “watching paint dry”, but apart from the visual aspect of the developing canvas, there isn’t much to see here. Script-wise, it is more of a radio play than a theatrical drama.

That being said, its target audience lapped it up and shows such as this are an agreeable way to spend an hour on a weekday afternoon. The paintings created live by Wilson during each performance are all on sale, with contact details available upon leaving the auditorium at the end of the show.

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