Review by Hywel Farrow-Wilton
All shows start off as seeds. Seeds that, if nurtured and cared for, can grow into beautiful flowers, spreading their theatrical pollen into the hearts of audiences. It was with that in mind that I was excited to see The Gardening Club move into the main space of New Wimbledon Theatre for one night only, but would this new musical blossom?
The Gardening Club has had a meteoric rise over the last two years, finding its roots in Liverpool, gaining strength at the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe where it was named as one of Playbill’s top 20 shows, before landing in the New Wimbledon Theatre. The show ran last September in the theatre’s 80-seat studio space but that same production has been upgraded and restaged in the main 1,670-seat theatre (The eighth largest in London) for a one-off performance.
Written by Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts (LIPA) graduates Carleigh McRitchie and Bella Wright, The Gardening Club, as an idea, is an excellent seed. A pop/rock musical set in Georgia, USA against the backdrop of 2nd wave feminism in the late 1960s, about a group of young women who start a crime ring to distribute the contraceptive pill (which was only available to married women at the time) to women in their community who required it but couldn’t access it. This show is still very much in development, as the writers made clear in their post-show speech, but it was clear from tonight’s performance that this show still needed more time to grow and develop so that it can become the thriving sunflower that I can see within it.
There is a lot to love in this show. Its fun rock score creates a rebellious vibe that nicely juxtaposes the stereotypical mid-20th century suburban setting and there is a very Made In Dagenham feel about the show, especially in the finale where the whole cast comes together in a fiery act of protest against the ridiculous abortion and contraceptive laws in late 60s America. Watching it now, post the US Supreme Court striking down Roe v Wade and the disturbing return of anti-abortion rhetoric in UK politics, the show’s central theme of the struggle of getting men in power to listen to women and to give women a voice in decisions made about their own bodies, strikes a much deeper chord than it would have done just a few short years ago. The audience relates more closely to the women’s struggles and hopefully appreciates the progress made through sacrifice and protest, which we often take for granted.
With a cast of 13, it felt as if there were too many characters for the audience to get their heads around. There are five central characters that make up the actual ‘Gardening Club’, the tenacious journalist Phoebe, the brave nurse Betty, the picture-perfect housewife Shelia, the free-spirited Maggie and the shy, bookish Vicki, played by Emma Wallace, Olivia Taylor Quinn, Hannah Greensmith, Emma Espada and Lola Garlick, respectively. We then have ‘the men’ Richie Paisley as the youthful romantic Miles, Isaac Moore as the lecherous, blackmailing Luke and Harry Belton as the sweet but traditional Cliff. The cast is then rounded out by a handful of ensemble members who have frustratingly little to do. However, there are no weak links among the cast, and all had clearly put in hard work to make the most of their stage time and let their characters shine.
Packed with sixteen songs, and with 8 principal characters, it means there is not enough time for the book to give depth to them all before we’re whisked into a musical number. The songs are fun, if rather generic but unfortunately fail to move the plot along. Many of the songs stunt the pacing and put too much pressure on the dialogue to convey all the needed exposition and drama. Consequently, the plot feels fairly thin on tension as the characters’ relationships to one another are unclear and the whole actual operation of ‘The Gardening Club’ is overlooked almost entirely. For a show essentially about drug-dealing, we never actually get to see any drugs being dealt, just scenes where the characters talk about what’s going on rather than showing us. The only exception was the ’heist’ scene in Act Two, where the women don disguises and break into a pharmacy to steal more oestrogen. It was a great scene, but it was disappointing that this was the only time we ever got to see the women work together as a crime ring.
Additionally, the show often feels as if it struggles to marry its central, political themes with its storytelling. Frustratingly, for a feminist show about women’s reproductive rights, they mostly just talk about their relationships with their husbands, boyfriends, bosses etc. Whilst this gives context to their lives and highlights the awful situations that some women have to deal with, especially surrounding Maggie’s storyline about her abusive relationship with Luke, it gives too much power and voice to the male characters which is fundamentally contradictory in a show that says that it is about women finding their own voices, standing up and taking matters into their own hands when the patriarchy fails them. Without spoiling it, this is what the finale managed to get right, though it’s disappointing that the rest of the show fails to match that level of political tenacity.
To jump from an 80 to a 1,670-seat theatre is obviously an incredible leap, and it seems like the show may have bitten off a bit more than it can chew by making the jump before it was ready. The show was unfortunately marred throughout by technical issues that, to the cast’s credit, didn’t faze them at all, and they kept their composure through the mistimed lighting cues and microphone malfunctions. We were informed in the curtain call speech that there had only been three rehearsals that week and one tech run that morning, so I do have great sympathy for all involved, as it was clearly a very tight schedule that let the technical side down.
Ultimately, The Gardening Club has the foundations of a great show, but it fails to capture the political bite that it needs to do the themes of the show justice. I would love to see this show again in the future, but it would need to be in a venue that plays to its strengths more, ideally a smaller space where all the lyrics can be clearly heard. I look forward to seeing where this show goes next – though it may not have quite blossomed this time around, the potential is clear to see, and I have no doubt this will continue to grow. As the creators assured everyone at the curtain call, we definitely haven’t heard the last of The Gardening Club.
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