Lyonesse, Harold Pinter Theatre review ★★★★★

Lyonesse has the tools to roar its raison d'être: a West End stage and a starry cast, courtesy of screen favourites Kristin Scott Thomas and Lily James. Playwright Penelope Skinner has something to say too, but her depressing point: that even in our post-#MeToo times, men remain the downfall of women and their careers, gets so diluted in a whirlpool of misjudged humour, kookiness and red herrings that it ends up mewing.

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Scott Thomas and James, whose joint screen credits include Darkest Hour and Rebecca, are a juxtaposing comic double act here. Scott Thomas plays Elaine, a hardened, eccentric actress resurfacing after a 30-year disappearance, ready to tell the world about the powerful man who forced her into hiding. James is the ambitious but meek film executive sent to Cornwall by her powerhouse boss Sue (Doon Mackichan, very good) to cover her story as a final glory project before trying for baby number two.

Lily James (Kate) and Kristin Scott Thomas (Elaine) in Lyonesse at the Harold Pinter Theatre. Photo: Manuel Harlan

Holed up in Elaine’s tumbledown house, with seaweed climbing the walls of Georgia Lowe’s set and taxidermy birds trapped ominously in a cage, the two bond, eventually, on realising the extent to which their male partners have held them back. While Elaine’s story of a stalking and murder threat is far more dramatic, we also empathise with Kate putting her dreams on hold to have her high-flying husband’s kids.

It’s at this point that the story derails itself, and instead of saying something potent about how little has changed between Elaine and Kate’s generations, it morphs into an absurdist thriller in which the characters behave in increasingly implausible ways.

Under Ian Rickson’s direction, Kate’s sudden transformation from preppy, flustered golden girl to sea-swimming, kaftan-wearing hippy, ready to leave her husband at a phone-call’s notice, is wildly improbable. Similarly, James Corrigan as husband Greg is required to swing from playing the pin-up, loving husband type to a domineering, overt anti-feminist, and while Corrigan is convincing in both roles, it’s too drastic a personality change. Nor can we fathom why Elaine, one minute a hermit in a fur coat and wellies, is suddenly gunning for a glamorous, revenge-fuelled comeback.

Kristin Scott Thomas (Elaine) in Lyonesse at the Harold Pinter Theatre. Photo: Manuel Harlan

Also in the house is Chris (Sara Powell, decent if muted), Elaine’s oddball neighbour who has a knack for making straight women fall in love with her. Though a plotline too many for a story that doesn’t seem to know where it wants to go, Chris completes the vision of Elaine’s house becoming a female utopia. If Kate’s sudden adoption of Elaine and Chris’s lifestyle seemed unlikely, her equally quick rejection of it is whiplash inducing.

Still, Skinner’s story and Rickson’s production pulls itself together in its final moments. If we can forget all the waffle in the middle, including a shoehorned-in bit of clowning from James (props to illusion designer John Bulleid), Kate’s final scene is chilling in its probability.

As Elaine’s birdcage becomes the focus of the final scene, Skinner suggests that women’s roles are too entrenched for change to be as simple as the offer of more freedom. But with so many distractions along the way, this conclusion feels unsubstantiated.