Hooked

Unmarked graves haunt this stripped piece of theatre. The only set is a chair. The only figure on stage plays seven different women, all from last century, all famous/infamous in their own right, all tragic in their singular ways.

Adapted from the work of Carolyn Smart and performed by Canadian chameleon Nicky Guadagni, Hooked plays out in neat sections, arranged like stanzas in an epic poem. No lives intermingle. No narratives cross over. But all are hooked on some slow-acting poison.

Moors murderer Myra Hindley and Hitler confidante Unity Mitford open the show with a sharp one-two of vilification. Sympathy is hinted at, but more so their intoxicating complicity in the actions of the powerful, murderous men they loved.

In probably the weakest section, author Carson McCullers is played as a drunk. The demon drink is both Zelda Fitzgerald's greatest achievement in 1920s Paris (“we invented cockatils”) and her slowboat to madness. The writer Jane Bowles, whose life closes the show, moves from drink to a stroke to insanity.

Obsession with disastrous men links the writer Elizabeth Smart, who fell in love with the married poet George Barker, with the story of Dora Carrington's love for the gay writer Lytton Strachey.

Aside from the fine poetic writing, it is this tracing of the lines of tragedy between the women that grants most satisfaction.

Also of note, is that many, like Carrington and Bowles, have no graves. Hooked provides them with a suitably sombre memorial.