Dame Maureen Lipman in Rose at Park Theatre.Born into a poor Ukrainian family, as a child Rose sells fruit by the roadside to make a few kopek. After Cossacks sack her village and her bedridden father dies, she travels to Warsaw to join her older brother and his young family and soon finds her own sexual awakening with an artist husband with whom she has a daughter. Finding herself incarcerated in the ghetto as the occupying Nazis tighten their grip on the Polish capital, she loses both of them in the purges and narrowly escapes death herself by hiding in the sewers. Following the liberation she embarks on a series of attempted relocations with varying degrees of success which incorporate a mix of adventure, tragedy and a desire to anchor her memories of the past.
In years gone by, Lipman’s talent for bringing a matronly confidentiality to roles has enabled her to switch between levity and pathos at will, often in larger-than-life characters. Here, Sherman’s writing keeps her still and grounded for the most part, as she’s sitting shivah for the dead perched for the entire performance on a hard wooden bench. The physical restriction demands of her a more deeply nuanced performance and keeps the audience’s attention focused directly on her with just a few props to punctuate and animate the narrative.
Reflective of an elderly woman recounting her life stories, the piece is conversational and at times meandering, and whilst Dame Maureen may not have been 100% word-perfect and flawless on Press Night, she was charmingly engaged with every one of her patrons in the dark. It is easy to forget Sherman’s skill with a witty line when considering some of his darker themes, but here, in Lipman’s perfectly timed delivery, both his comedic and harrowing observations achieved a biting clarity.
