The Girls of Slender Means

..."a gallery of outstanding performances" (Whatsonstage)

..."masterly...the performances are faultless...savagely brilliant" (Metro)

Nominated for Best Ensemble, Stage Awards for Acting Excellence 2009


The Girls of Slender Means, adapted for the stage by Judith Adams and directed by Muriel Romanes, is a bold and witty celebration of Muriel Spark's literary spirit and genius. In a letter to Judith Adams before she died in 2006 Spark said "...Penelope and I have both read and discussed this script, and we feel it is a very impressive work, technically ambitious and original. I can only send my very sincere good wishes for its success...".

This is a large and complex production of a piece which poses new and challenging questions about the evolution of theatrical form and style for both the creative team and for audiences.

Poised on the edge of a defining moment in 1945 a community of young women in war-torn London is living in extraordinary and momentous times. Adams' adaptation of Spark's novel - about sex and the availability of it, money and the lack of it - is as chilling as an Arctic winter. Slashing the face of romantic relationships like flying glass, it elegantly captures a mysterious and seductive world driven by fear and foreboding.


"Our Club world, like the crooked house Spark describes, is its own matter and anti-matter, so I see it as holes of darkness permeated with little pools of light, saved personal space detailed but sparse.

It is also the circles of Dante's Divine Comedy - hell in the furnace/fires below, heaven on the roof and purgatory in between, where everyone but Nick and Joanna temporize and compromise to survive." (Judith Adams)

Photo copyright: Marc Marnie