Sheila's Island review - Humour, pathos and female relationships to the fore on Kenilworth stage

​When things go wrong on a company team-building exercise, they go horribly wrong.

Four women, middle managers in a nondescript business, are sent on a competitive adventure in the Lake District. However, their leader Sheila (played by director Jill Laurie, standing in for Kim Arnold) gets her navigation wrong, and they end up stranded, wet, cold and far from the comforts of home on an island in the middle of Derwent Water. It might as well be a desert island, for all the sense of remoteness it has.

The tensions between the characters are what make the play’s action. Julie (Tina Shinkwin) is the mousey housewife who brings a rucksack full of useful and useless gadgets. Fay (Ruth MacCullum) is an openly devout Christian, much given to anxious prayers and home-made hymns. Denise (Katie-Anne Ray) is the catalyst, a lonely woman with a barbed comment for everyone. She mercilessly exposes the truths behind the other’s lives. Sheila, out of her depth, struggles to keep them working together.

Though the first half of the play seemed a little long, devoted as it is largely to the back-stories of the characters, the second half more than makes up for it. The humour and the pathos of their ‘ordinary’ lives is brought into full and open conflict. Denise’s insensitivity especially highlights their tragedies and, obliquely, her own.

The acting throughout is sharp, subtle, deeply felt. Special credit must be made to director Jill Laurie, who stood in at short notice. Apart from her occasional glances at the script, her engagement with the character was full on.

Sheila’s Island is one of a string of successful plays by writer Tim Firth (Kinky Boots, Calendar Girls, Neville’s Island). It’s an all-female play that doesn’t sugar-coat female relationships. But neither does it patronise them. It is very funny with lots of verbal and physical jokes. It occasionally seems to nudge a bit too close to mockery, especially Denise’s humiliation of Fay, who is mentally ill with a sad and traumatic past. But this, one might say, is the stuff of real life. Cruelty often masks insecurity. Sheila’s Island walks a fine line with humour, honesty and acuity.

Until May 25. Call 01926 856548 or visit talismantheatre.co.uk to book.