We’ll Always Have Paris - Mill at Sonning

The world premier of Jill Hyam’s 'We’ll Always Have Paris' took place at the Mill at Sonning last week.

Directed by Joanna Read, the plot sees three English ladies ‘of a certain age’ meeting up in Paris for a reunion.

Quadruple divorcee Raquel (Louise Jameson), who’s on the look-out for a new toy boy, and the recently widowed Anna (Lucy Fleming) never did get on at school, so it’s left to retired headmistress Nancy (Marlene Sidaway) to keep the peace between them.

The trio are wooed by Charlot (Michael Fenner), their cabaret-singing French handyman, and harried by their fearsome landlady Madame Boussiron, (wonderfully played by Anna Nicholas).

By the end of the play, ‘les femmes anglaises’ find that their personalities, outlooks and futures have all changed in ways they could never have predicted when their reunion began.

While the eventual outcome is a surprise, ‘We’ll Always Have Paris’ perhaps relies on too many clichés for its success - the bad  French plumbing, the Maurice Chevalier-type Frenchman and the age-old animosity between the two nations. 

Had the play rooted itself more definitely in the genre of English comedy-drama, it could have achieved greater strength. As it was, it fell between two stools - not light comedy, not straight drama - which affected its overall impact, although Madame Boussiron’s tirade against the current English invasion of France and its effect on the French way of life came across as a crie de coeur from the whole of the French nation.