The Good Women – Kensington + Chelsea Festival / Chelsea Theatre, London

A love story set in 1960s Switzerland, The Good Women also explores what happens when women lack agency over their own lives.

The Good Women

Given the opportunity recently to see one of the shows in the Kensington + Chelsea Festival 2023, there was one in particular that drew my eye.  This was The Good Women, a queer love story set against a surprising background.  That background?  The struggle for universal suffrage in Switzerland, where women only gained the right to vote in 1971.  Yes, you read that right.  Did you know that?  It was certainly a surprise to me!

Well, a surprise and yet not, somehow.  I know Switzerland is a socially conservative place.  Yet I also associate it with votes on pretty much everything.  Even whether or not you’re allowed to become a Swiss citizen is put to a local vote.  Just surprising how late this democratic process was closed to half the population.

In The Good Women the story of women’s right to vote in Switzerland is not told directly, however.  Instead it plays out through an apparently true story (although hard to find out more about this claim) of two very different women, Bette and Trudy, and the impact that the lack of a vote has on their lives. I saw it at the Chelsea Theatre, where you can catch many other shows during the festival.

A(n Indirect) Women’s Suffrage Story

So Bette is the host of a cooking show on television.  After what we must assume is a typical day of small iniquities at the hands of her director, she meets Trudy, who is taking a break from grocery shopping.  Or taking a break from her husband, more like.  It’s not love at first sight.  A queer love story was not an easy thing in 1960s Switzerland, but moreover Trudy, self-medicating with alcohol and pills, doesn’t make the best impression.

Another chance encounter flings them back into each other’s orbits, though, and their story grows.  Particularly when Bette finds out how Trudy’s husband treats her and insists she doesn’t go back.  But it’s still not easy.  As a married woman, Trudy can’t get a job without her husband literally signing off on it.  Bette is single so has no such constraints, but she knows she’s getting a raw deal on her contract. Why is she, the star of the show, not truly profiting from her success like the men around her are?

The plot is a simple yet indirect way to share the reality of women without the vote: no agency, no power to change their own lives for the better.  Living in a man’s world and yet struggling (in Bette’s case) to garner support for change, to overturn the status quo.  Rather than being manifestly political, the focus of The Good Women remains on the women’s lives and budding love story.  The latter is again not particularly overt, but is sweet and heartfelt.

Final Thoughts

I am going to be honest: I needed a little time to immerse myself in Lena Liedl’s script.  The opening scenes felt to me a little stilted, but this could also have been new venue nerves.  But it quickly grew on me, as did the chalk and cheese dynamic between Faith McCune as Bette and Liedl herself in the role of Trudy.  

The Good Women is a play on a fringe and festival scale which thinks big.  It tells a nuanced story against a historic backdrop in the space of 75 minutes.  Chloé Rochefort’s set and costume design has a dialled-up 1960s aesthetic which is reminiscent of television in Technicolour, plus includes a few nice vintage flourishes.  There’s a good use of pre-recorded audio to supplement the tight cast. The production never feels constrained: it feels as if the story and characters have room to breathe and develop.

If this is a sign of the quality at this year’s Kensington + Chelsea Festival, then get booking!  As an inclusive recognition of the borough’s broad socio-economic range, tickets are pay-what-you-can.  Endeavours like this, and theatre like this, are worth supporting.  I hope to see you there!

Salterton Arts Review’s rating: 3.5/5

Kensington + Chelsea Festival on until 31 August. Find out more about the festival here and The Good Women here.