"The Party Girls". Oxford Playhouse
It's Sisters Week at the Oxford Playhouse. While the Brontës are dying of consumption in the Burton Taylor Studio at the back of the building, the Mitfords are going full Adolf in the main house. The British have an abiding fascination with the Mitford Sisters. They’re like monsters in debutante form, Frightening Young Things. Buried barely 18 miles from the Playhouse Box Office in the stunning, chocolate-box village of Swinbrook, pretty graves all in a row, they are proof that some corner of a British field is forever fascist. We just can’t get enough of them. There are at least thirty books that tell their story, from the Collected Letters to Hitler’s Valkyrie . As recently as this summer, TV audiences have been treated to Outrageous , which explores the lives and loves of this bizarre family. But Amy Rosenthal’s new play wisely avoids tackling the whole saga, and focuses on the heroic Jessica (Emma Noakes in a performance oozing dignity and wit), who revolted against the family...