A gentle role for Amanda Abbington after the Strictly scandal? Think again …

After the summer Amanda Abbington has had, you might think she’d fancy a gentle role. A guest spot on Death in Paradise, perhaps? Or maybe as a bewigged duchess in the next season of Bridgerton, kitted out in candy-coloured satin? Instead, as the Strictly bullying scandal turns increasingly nasty — after quitting the show, Abbington accused her professional partner, Giovanni Pernice, of “unnecessary, abusive, cruel and mean” behaviour, allegations for which she has since received rape threats — she is starring in a fairly grim play about rape.
Last week Abbington received an email informing her that she would “die on stage” unless she retracted her Strictly complaints (she went out and did this show anyway). So we have a play about sexual violence towards women whose lead actress is currently the subject of death and rape threats. Not the most flattering insight into modern life, is it?
When It Happens to You is an autobiographical sort-of thriller by the American novelist Tawni O’Dell (who sounds like a femme fatale in a Raymond Chandler mystery) about a middle-aged writer who is woken one night by a distraught, tear-choked phone call from her twentysomething daughter, Esme. “The night my daughter was raped I made chicken enchiladas for dinner,” Tara (Abbington) tells us at the start of the show, with a strain of bitter humour that thankfully leavens the fairly unremitting bleakness of the story.
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It’s about the aftermath of the attack — the small indignities that a rape victim has to endure, like the police emptying Esme’s fridge and sealing off her apartment (“Shall we book into a hotel, should I bill the rapist?” Tara fumes). We watch as Esme (played by Rosie Day) begins to self-destruct, becoming so sad, drunk and convincingly horrible that Tara, heart-slashingly, “starts to wish she would just go away”. It’s a good line, sharp as a pistol crack, and there are lots more like it.
Such tough material demands confident performances and each of the four actors who tell this story rises to it. Abbington is warm, a touch brassy and totally stricken; Day is powerfully brittle, acidic and crushed; while Miles Molan and Tok Stephen provide ample support as Tara’s goofy, loveable brother and a tactless but well-intentioned detective. Jez Bond’s unfussy direction lets the heavy material breathe, but I wonder whether he could have been more ambitious with the staging. At times it felt like a read-through.
The line of LED lights tracing out the New York skyline on the brick back wall was a nice touch but the rest of the design felt a bit cheap. The Park is a small theatre with limited resources but come on — doesn’t Abbington, having relinquished her Strictly sequins, deserve better than an ill-fitting grey shirt and slacks, badly dyed eyebrows and scraped-back hair? She didn’t look much like a successful American novelist to me.
Sorry, I got sidetracked by hair dye — back to the sexual violence. O’Dell’s play, in which she originally starred for its off-Broadway run, tackles something horrible with humour and heart. And yet I couldn’t honestly tell you what When It Happens to You is for. It’s didactic, certainly: “One in four women have been raped,” Esme tells us. “What kind of society allows this to happen?” Which is fine, if you like your political messages served raw (I’m more of a medium-rare girl, myself), but didn’t we know that already? Most of the play’s lessons — that victims blame themselves (“I couldn’t get him to leave, Mum”), that their loved ones will be traumatised too — felt pretty orthodox.
If they land with audiences who haven’t thought much about this stuff, then that’s great. But I don’t think many of us need to be convinced that being raped by a stranger in your own home is horrific. I’m more moved by writing — such as Kendall Feaver’s excellent Alma Mater, which just finished down the road at the Almeida — that touches on the things about rape that we don’t want to admit (why it’s much more often the crime of someone close than a stranger) or can’t agree on (how to punish it, how to stop it). Tellingly, Esme’s rapist makes no appearance in the play. But if we’re serious about tackling this crime, wouldn’t he be a character worth trying to understand? When It Happens to You is tough and moving. Yet I’m more interested in why it happens.★★★☆☆Park Theatre, London N4, parktheatre.co.uk
Dominic Maxwell is away
For tickets, visit thetimes.com/tickets
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