RUTH AYLETT admires the blunt honesty with which a woman’s experience is recorded, but detects the unexamined privilege that underlies it
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Sublime monologue
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wife
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The Wife of Cyncoed
Sherman Theatre, Cardiff
MATT HARTLEY’S The Wife of Cyncoed is a rare piece of theatre and writing that gets under the skin of a city and its working-class characters.
Vivien Parry plays 66-year-old divorcee Jayne who is feeling invisible, unfulfilled and used as unpaid childcare in her retirement. Parry’s solo performance, on stage for 80 minutes, is sensational, taking us through a gamut of emotions of misery, joy, ecstasy and self-discovery. The intimate setting of the Sherman’s small theatre means we can see every grimace, smile and gesture from Parry’s sublime monologue.
Writer Hartley has not only got the dialogue of working class characters off pat as they inch up the social ladder, but also captures in a believable way the dialogue of an ageing woman living her diminished life. He also captures Cardiff in its many neighbourhoods from the very working class Rhymney, from which Jayne has clawed her way up, to the much posher Cyncoed, before her divorce relegates her to the lesser environments of Roath.
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