Camille Ucan’s debut play Three Hens in a Boat, is a twenty-first century update of the famous Victorian comic novel by Jerome K Jerome – Three Men in a Boat. Camille Ucan (BBC’s Here We Go, C4’s The Horne Section) plays Jay, one of the Hens, and is joined by Verona Rose (BBC Three’s Fully Blown, Netflix’s Top Boy) as Gloria, Jay’s mother, and Ellen O’Grady (Porgy & Bess, Nine) as Claudette, Jay’s grandmother
Like the original novel the plot centres around a journey down the Thames in a skiff, this time from Kingston to Henley, to celebrate the impending marriages of all three characters. Unlike the original book, the play focuses on mother/daughter relationships and the intergenerational tensions and dynamic between the three characters. There is plenty of laugh out loud comedy ranging from slapstick to witty one liners with everything in between. The surprising, yet somewhat disturbing appearance of Montmorency, the dog in the original book, adds some black humour.
Ucan has a Guyanese grandmother and uses what she calls ‘my own hand-me-down’ history to inspire the character of Claudette who we learn is a retired midwife from Guyana via Trinidad. Gloria, Jay’s mother, is a successful artist, while Jay is a student in Edinburgh, having dropped out of several previous attempts at university.
The play explores many topical themes – climate change, social media, fad diets, cancer, racism and the gender issues in Disney films to name a few. There are also the raucous stereotypical Hen party moments with glitter accessories and booze. However, at the heart of the play are the tensions and secrets in the relationships of the three generations of women. The audience is led to consider these secrets and ask questions in the first act – most notably why haven’t her mother and grandmother met Jay’s fiancé? Gloria and Claudette also have secrets they are hiding from the others.
The set cleverly creates the Thames with an idyllic backdrop of pastels, of willows, reeds, bull-rushes and flowers with the hint of a cityscape in the distance. This is enhanced by the soft lighting. However, the getting away from it all into nature does not bring Jay, who has planned the trip, exactly what she hoped for although there is some resolution by the end of the play.
Ultimately Ucan wants to show how relationships with parents and grandparents are never static and the dynamics and hierarchies shift and change but at the heart of it all, as her character states in the play, “Love challenges and love defies boundaries.”
Three Hens in a Boat is at The Watermill until June 7. Click here for tickets.
Two Town Councillor vacancies – opportunity to represent your fellow residents
