THEATRE: How To Be Another Woman

There’s a moment in the Gate Theatre’s new devised play, How To Be Another Woman, when an actress slowly mimes reaching for a book and ostentatiously flipping it open on a crowded bus. She tells her companion that she’s reading Madame Bovary.

There’s a moment in the Gate Theatre’s new devised play, How To Be Another Woman, when an actress slowly mimes reaching for a book and ostentatiously flipping it open on a crowded bus. She tells her companion that she’s reading Madame Bovary. The audience isn’t fooled. We can see that she’s posing with a stiff sequined evening bag, the flap held open like the cover of a book.  It’s the perfect visual metaphor for the frustrations of Charlene, a young secretary who doesn’t know which type of woman she’s supposed to be, but knows that, whether the paradigm is La Dame Aux Camelias or Modern Talking’s “New York City Girl”, it’s the costume that confirms her in the role.