Ruth Leon’s Pocket review

Love All – Jermyn Street Theatre 

I always thought that Lord Peter Wimsey, Dorothy L. Sayers’ amateur sleuth, was a bit wet. But his female counterpart and later wife, Harriet Vane, was my heroine. Here was a woman in detective fiction who was strong, intelligent and independent, rare commodities in the 1920s when she came into being.

Harriet Vane was Dorothy L. Sayers by another name, who had graduated from Oxford University even before women were allowed degrees, supported herself with her pen, and espoused the cause of women in everything she wrote including, it turns out, this overtly feminist play at the Jermyn Street Theatre. In Love All, she has written three, or, depending on how you count them, four female roles all designed to deflate the leading male ego, a self-absorbed successful novelist who is married to one, lover to another, employer to the third. Each of her women is more than capable of putting him in his hopelessly outclassed place by demonstrating to him that he is, in fact, surplus to their requirements.

The poor man’s job in Love All is to rant about their success while mouthing every traditional trope about the place of women in society and in his life. His is the weakest role, just there to have his every prejudice knocked down by the women, like a lone skittle.

The 1930s dialogue is sometimes outdated and stilted but the women’s outrage shines through in every moment, and triumphs. This is largely due to the efforts of an exceptionally well-cast company and a director, Tom Littler who understands the dynamic of a playwright, good acting, and a play with an unmissable agenda.

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