Mercifully, a preambling voiceover explains the set-up of Tom Eyen’s weird two-hander. A Hollywood actress is choking herself with her rosary on a huge cross in her mental asylum. She is played by two women, who wrangle over the story of her life.
One, a nun, is her former, virginal self. The other is the ‘great white whore’ she became in Hollywood. It’s sold as a double-bill – the original 1964 play, and a contemporary revision. In truth, the alterations are entirely cosmetic, chucking in the odd mobile phone and Google reference. They don’t address the glaring anachronism of the actress having signed a life-long studio contract that became horribly punitive.
Yet the contemporary version far more effective, because Laura Pradelska and Helen Russell-Clark, having switched roles, finally feel suited to their parts. It’s often baffling, strangely sexual, but occasionally haunting.