Molly is a play with a message, and it is a message I agree with. Women like the titular character do indeed live lives stifled by traditional gender roles, they do indeed encounter sexism in the workplace, and it is certainly true that awareness should be raised about these things. I applaud the good intention of Grace Fitzgerald in writing this play. But she is writing a play, not a public awareness campaign, and as a play it fails because it doesn’t challenge us. It doesn’t ask us anything we haven’t considered before. The fundamental fact that so many student playwrights forget is that a play must ask something of its audience, propose a thesis, challenge an assumption. It must surprise us, or it isn’t drama, it’s a recitation of truisms.

The story follows our hero, played by Pearl Mahaga, in a loveless marriage and attempting to assert herself as she tries to forge a career. And not much happens. Her boss is a standard creepy sexist played by Guy Clark in a broad but  entertaining role, and there is Nice Guy (tm?) Lewis Macdonald in the office as well who understands and cares and proves that not all men are mean. Back home, there’s Zayne Wura as a husband who has precisely zero complexity to him (I was counting down the scenes until he came in drunk and vituperative), and though Wura plays him with authority there is no chemistry, even negative chemistry, between him and Mahaga that makes us believe in them as a pair who live together. The dialogue is never more than obvious, the characters too bland to allow the actors to do much.

In plot terms then, it is unambitious. But there is a potentially interesting element added in in the form of Molly’s subconscious, a chorus of women with makeup that reminds us of Swan Lake, another tale of trapped, oppressed womanhood. They dance and hum in various atmospheric ways, acting out the inner life of our oppressed protagonist. Normally I would salute this attempt to incorporate different theatrical styles, but here it left me cold. The dance choreography  was very good, with some very accomplished ballet and salsa moves executed with grace. The problem is, though, that it still feels by-the-numbers: you can’t just throw in dance sequences to better make your point if your point was stunningly obvious beforehand. Dancing to Walking on Sunshine will always be joyous, and made me smile, but when all it does is tell us that someone’s happy they got a job, it’s just a redundant extra exclamation mark in the script.

In other words, the chorus feels like they’ve wandered on from a different play, an attempt to add verve to a very, very linear story. What the play needs, though, is not different ways of telling, but different things to tell. The patriarchy is a very complicated issue, and it deserves some kind of sensitive exposition. For all its promise to give us a view into an oppressed world, we never see how Molly’s husband comes to oppress her, the long grinding journey from true love to control and wounded pride. Instead, he is bad because he is bad. If you are going to put wife-beating on stage (and that sequence is nicely done, with a wall of subconscious significantly taking the hits) then your play needs to allow for complexity - to make it into agit-prop is to trivialise it.

I am sorry to say this when the programme  admits this possibility – it claims it is not a detailed study. It also claims it wants to challenge us. But despite an understanding of the gravity of her issue, Fitzgerald hasn’t put that gravity into her play. Gravity is communicated when you allow for complexity. Let’s hope the next feminist play in Cambridge is all the more powerful for moving beyond timidity, and having the bravery to truly challenge us. 

Molly runs at the Corpus Playroom at 9.30pm until Saturday