This is the premise of Melissa Bubnic’s Boys Will Be Boys – a play about a female stockbroker who believes
she is taking it to the boys, and beating them at their own game.
Having spent most of my working life in the finance sector,
I, along with my fellow theatre-going party, saw a familiar world unfolding on
stage. We had come from an early dinner, during which the four of us discussed
our respective workplaces, with two of our group noting their firms were
currently recruiting women for senior management roles. That’s right – in order
to meet their gender equality/diversity quotas, two major finance institutions
were under strict orders to interview only women for the open positions. We
were eager to see how our reality was going to be portrayed on stage.
Bubnic’s play takes us into the fast-living, fast-selling
world of broking, where clients are pawns to be manipulated, careers are based
on who not what you know, and the big deals are won and lost in the back rooms
of strip clubs. The lead character, Astrid, has wriggled her way into this
world, seemingly on her own terms. She takes on a junior, a girl named Priya in
whom it appears Astrid sees something of herself. Together, they navigate the boys
club, adopting the old line about Ginger Roger’s as a mantra: ‘She did
everything Fred Astaire did, just backwards and in high heels’.
The cast is all female – a decision which forces the
audience to examine their own attitudes towards ‘working’ women (in all senses
of the word), and sexism. An uncomfortable early scene featuring an almost
naked Zindzi Okenyo (who just five minutes earlier was playing Harrison, the
son of a wealthy client who is bullied by his new employers) made me question
my own feelings about the female form. Would I have felt as embarrassed for this
actress if there were no men in the audience at all? And when Tina Bursill
crossed the stage in a skimpy blue leotard, breasts thrust forward, did I, like
many women in the audience, give her a subtle murmur of approval, acknowledging
her bravery? When women use their bodies to generate influence – or to make
money – is it empowering as Priya suggests, or simply perpetuating the idea of the
victim?
The actors spent the majority of the show in tailored pant
suits – the three supplementary characters in bold green, blue and peach, standing
out against the white and grey of our protagonist and her protégé. This choice
was no doubt made to help the supporting cast demonstrate their masculinity,
juxtaposed against their occasional forays into sequinned leotards. The only
hint of femininity about our leads was the shiny black heels they strutted the
stage in. But in reality, the business women of today, particularly those in
senior positions, opt for bright colours, prints and strong but feminine
statement pieces. It’s not uncommon to see bright pink pencil skirts, silk
blouses, bold floral patterns printed across knee-length, structured dresses
and heavy knit bolero jackets in white or cream. I wondered if our leads could
have benefited from a more womanly look, but in the end this did not detract
from the overall design of the show.
In the Director’s Q&A, featured in the program, Paige
Rattray talks about how she dealt with the challenge of staging the piece,
which slips regularly from boardroom, to strip club, to hotel bar – as the
narrative unfolds - to cabaret theatre in which we hear Astrid’s ‘inner
monologue’. “Basically, we had to try to create a space that we could shift between
those two worlds really quickly,” Rattray explains. The end result was a wide, sparsely
furnished office space, complete with fluorescent lighting tiles and likely-fake
pot plant. Astrid’s cabaret moments are treated in situ, with the addition of a
microphone, mirror ball and fog machine at varying intervals. Personally, I
think the transitions could have been done more effectively by actually
introducing a cabaret set to a small corner of the theatre, most likely
downstage; this would have permitted the audience to more easily forgive Astrid’s
crude but flirtatious dialogue and passable singing voice.
That is not to say that Danielle Cormack’s performance as
Astrid was flawed – it just could have benefited from more polish around the
vocals. Perhaps this will come over time – the play had only opened two days
prior. This also meant that the cast tripped over their dialogue occasionally, a
blemish easily forgiven. Otherwise the performances were strong, and all parts
well-cast. Cormack’s Astrid was both hard-arsed and likeable, with just enough
subtly that you could believe she was neither victim nor villain. Sophia
Roberts as Priya was perhaps a little rigid and naïve, but this was as much to
do with the script as her interpretation.
The most interesting character was Isabelle, played
beautifully by Meredith Penman. The high-class hooker tells Astrid straight up
that she’s not in ‘Pretty Woman’ and there will be no rescuing, and it is
through her eyes that we see just what playing in a man’s world can do to a
woman. This is not because of how Isabelle makes her living, but due to her
treatment at the hands of Astrid. The iron-clad exterior Astrid has assumed makes
her somehow more masculine than her male colleagues; a character trait made
worse because we feel she should know better.
The script has potential, but perhaps needs a little more
time to reach its goal. Why, for example, have Priya tell the lamest, tamest
jokes to the delight of her male clients while they downed liquor ahead of the
expected floor show? Similarly, why are those same nameless men portrayed as
clowns, buffooning around an office party (Christmas?) like naughty boys? They
are not sinister, nor realistic. Was Bubnic trying to avoid victimising men, or
was she saying they are actually quite harmless? Or was the intent to play down
these interactions so that they did not take away from the main game – the
relationship between Priya and Astrid? Either way, I was not convinced.
In the real world, a woman is afforded perhaps a little more
credit for her success than was shown to Astrid, but then again, there is
absolutely a ‘behind her back’ conversation that goes on between men about
their female counterparts in the finance sector. I have witnessed the blokey
attitudes, the drinking culture and the innuendo-laden laughter first-hand. So
do I think a woman can play in a man’s world? Perhaps a better question is –
why should she want to? If I have to turn a blind eye to behaviours that make
my stomach churn simply to succeed in a job, then I have to question why on
earth I would want to do that job in the first place? If I wanted to be a
broker, why couldn’t I start my own, female-only firm, with only female
clients? Why not play on my terms, instead of someone elses? Instead of trying
to beat men at their own game, why don’t women start their own league, with
their own rules – ones that suit their particular strengths and abilities? I
thank Bubnic and the team from STC for challenging me with these questions.
Details
Viewed: 22 April 2015
Venue: Wharf 2 Theatre
Author: Melissa Bubnic
Director: Paige Rattray
Company: Sydney Theatre Company
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