Let’s be honest about this – we wouldn’t have gone to see this play/production had it not been for the fact that Jan Goodman is in it. The Old Red Lion Theatre, although we had heard of it, has never been on our radar. But neither Janie nor I had previously seen Jan performing in the theatre – despite the fact that Jan and I appeared together at the National not so long ago, darlings…
…so that needed to be put right. Jan is married to my friend Rohan Candappa, just in case anyone reading this doesn’t know that and yet might care.
Anyway, point is, Janie and I would have loved to have booked to see this production when Jan told us about it at Rohan’s gig back in December…
…but the handful of January dates for the original run of The Paper Doll House didn’t work for us.
When Rohan postponed the ThreadMash I was going to attend 12 February, because Jan’s run had been extended…
…it made sense to me to book the show and go.
Janie had been cherishing the idea of a quiet night in for that evening, but as the day progressed started asking me questions about the show and eventually asked,
do you think I’d be able to get a ticket at this late stage?
…to which the answer of course was, “let me see – they are being sold on-line…yes we can!”
The weather was awful, as indeed the weather has been for most of 2026 so far. We worked out that the neighbourhood benefits from free parking on pay-bays and residents bays after 6:30. Despite me joking about “there be dragons” on my copy of the London maps for any area that doesn’t have a W in the postcode, actually I know those Clerkenwell and Islington roads pretty well, having spent so much of my life working with charities based on those mean streets.
The hard-boiled language is a segue into the play, The Paper Doll House. Set in 1956, revolving around a dramatic mother and daughter combination who might, or might not, have been the perpetrators of a notorious Hollywood murder in the 1920s.
The play unashamedly wallows in pastiche of the two golden periods involved, and does so very well. The play also makes knowing and homage nods to more serious theatre. Both of the abuser/victim pairs involved: the mother & daughter, plus the gangster & moll, have their Ibsenian Dolls House moments in the play. The piece also resonated with Williamsesque Glass Menagerie & Baby Doll themes.
An intriguing mix of camp fun and thoughtful drama, this play could fall flat without high quality acting. That’s where the cast, in particular Jan Goodman (mother) and Carol Been (daughter) come in. Their performances were top notch. Camp and comedic at times, sinister and tragic at others. Credit also to Tug J Wilson, the director, whose work with all four actors must surely have benefited from his long and varied career on stage and screen. Credit also to Tom Inman and Chloe Teresa Wilson, who played the less-developed roles of gangster and moll respectively with panache and measure.
As Janie and I so often say when we see top notch theatre in fringe/pub theatres, this play/production deserves a wider audience than it can achieve at The Old Red Lion, run extensions notwithstanding.
We enjoyed our evening of theatre and at last we’ve seen Jan Goodman perform on stage. Not before time!
