Theatre Deep Dive: David Tennant in 'An Experienced Woman Gives Advice' (1995)
Theatre Deep Dive: David Tennant in 'An Experienced Woman Gives Advice' (1995)
I haven’t done a thread on any of David’s plays in a while, so I had some time yesterday to rustle one up about his 1995 play, An Experienced Woman Gives Advice. It premiered 28 years ago yesterday (which was why I chose to do a deeper dive about it) so let’s get into it!
An Experienced Woman Gives Advice (I’ll be using EW to refer to the play from here on out because what a long title!) would be David’s first time performing onstage at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester.
Prior to winning his role in EW, the last play David had done was What The Butler Saw as Nicholas Beckett, a role he was warmly praised for. What The Butler Saw ran for two months at five different venues around England before closing its run at the Nottingham Theatre Royal in late May 1995.
EW’s playwright, Iain Heggie, had seen phenomenal success with his 1987 tour-de-force, A Wholly Healthy Glasgow. But in the years afterwards, Heggie had produced only a few more plays before deciding he’d rather go back to teaching and let his writing commence at its own pace.
Originally written as a miniature sex comedy, EW was long in development, and received further script development workshops at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow in 1992, and at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh in 1993.
Its world premiere would see Heggie’s return to the stage.
Initially, it might have seemed odd that EW - with its Glasgow setting, Scottish writer, and fully Scottish cast - didn’t make its debut in Scotland. But because Heggie and the Royal Exchange had similar actor-centered outlooks and many of the artistic directors in Scotland preferred a more visual style, Heggie chose to work with the Royal Exchange (who liked his work anyway) and the play made its debut in Manchester.
Previews for EW began at the Royal Exchange Manchester on 21 November 1995, with an opening day of 23 November 1995. It had a small cast of five: Siobhan Redmond as Bella, David Tennant as Kenny, Jenny McCrindle as Nancy, Alastair Galbraith as Irving, and Alexander Morton as Stick. It was directed by Matthew Lloyd, and its assistant director was Marianne Elliott.
The set, which was designed by Laurie Dennett, was quite sparse - a communal back garden and garden shed of a block of Glasgow tenement flats. The music was composed by Paddy Cunneen, who fans will recognize from many other projects he did with David (like The Pillowman) and two others - Sunburst Finish and Bite - on which I’ve previously done deep dives.
The three-act play had a runtime of 3 hours and 20 minutes, with two intervals - one 15 minutes in length, the other 10 minutes in length. It closed its run on 16 December 1995. Tickets were priced from £5.50 to £18, with matinees on Wednesdays and Saturdays.
The action takes place on two Sunday mornings and opens with Bella, who’s a 39 year old teacher, gardening in her back garden. We learn she’s in a three-year long relationship with a live-in toyboy lover, Kenny (DT) who’s a former pupil and 15 years younger than her. And that he didn’t come home the previous night.
Bella calls Kenny her “charming, fallible boy”, and she treats him like one. Former lovers say he’s “tall, kind of blond, with a lovely lean build” and “incredibly rich brown eyes.” There’s “just no resisting him,” and he’s "bastardly good looking.”
In a series of interruptions from people passing into the garden, Bella (Redmond) dispenses advice to the inquiring strangers Nancy and Irving (Galbraith), and learns Kenny spent the night with another woman…from the woman herself, Nancy (McCrindle), who doesn’t realize who she’s told. What Bella does with this information - and how her meticulously cultivated freedom of choice lifestyle shatters, especially given her first love, Stick (Morton) lives nearby - is what the rest of the play explores. We see love, lust, and lies play out as Bella makes her choices.
And there’s a scene with Bella and Kenny…and sex behind the doors of a rocking, exploding garden shed!
I haven’t been able to locate a production script of the play to see whether this scene was enacted onstage, but Heggie’s published script book says this scene, where Bella strips Kenny of his clothes piece by piece before they go into the shed to have sex offstage, had some brief nudity. None of the play reviews I’ve been able to find mention any nudity, though one article about the play does state that due to ”strong language and the sexual nature of the story, the play is not suitable for children under 15.“ (I don’t know how much weight I should give this particular article, however, because it also calls the lead character "Maggie” rather than “Bella”!) Anyway, if this scene was included in the play, it would be the second known instance (the first being that now-infamous What The Butler Saw full frontal nude photograph) where DT was onstage in the buff!
Speaking of reviews, they were wildly different - some found it hilariously funny with barbed, sharp dialogue, while others found it fatiguing. David’s “able portrayal” as Kenny was praised as part of an extremely talented cast, and his was called a “great performance”.
David and Siobhan Redmond earned Manchester Evening News Theatre Awards (MENTA) nominations - Redmond for Best Actress, and David for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. They also earned British Regional Theatre Awards nominations; Redmond for Best Actress and David for Best Actor. The play itself was also awarded a MENTA nomination for Best New Play. Redmond won both her nominations; David and the play didn’t.
Photos from the play are almost nonexistent. I haven’t located any images housed in any archives anywhere…so far. That doesn’t mean they’re not out there, mind you, just I haven’t found them yet! I did manage to find a few of horrible quality while digging around in newspaper archives (I’ll refrain from venting here about the quality aspects of digitizing newspapers, as that’s a rant for another day) but it’s a damned shame. I mean, in one of these, David just looks like a David-shaped black hole with floating arms! Nevertheless, I’ll leave them here.
Something else I found fascinating during my research was that, like many venues, the Royal Exchange had a tradition of scheduling at least one informal discussion with the director and members of the company for each of their productions. While I didn’t find any information on whether a discussion of this sort occurred during EW’s run, I have to assume it did. Ah, to be a fly on the wall for that!
And that, my friends, is pretty much the story of An Experienced Woman Gives Advice! I wish I knew much more about this play, but like many parts of David’s theatre career, wide gaps in our knowledge remain. But I keep on looking.
Thanks for reading!