There’s not much on the stage. Three bathtubs, a metal dress form and shower head hanging above each, a backdrop of panelled walls: That’s about it. Designed by Brian Smith, it’s an apt setting for The Drowning Girls, a ghost story about three British women who, all murdered by the same man in the early years of the last century, were considered–and considered themselves–insubstantial. Insubstantial, that is, until their murderer charmed them into marriage, thereby making them, as one of the trios says, “a useful member of society.”
Grim and disquietingly funny, The Drowning Girls (Great Canadian Theatre Company) is as much a cypher for women’s plight in our own day as it is a look back to an era when many women were dependent on men for everything from money to social standing. It was a situation ripe for abuse–physical, emotional, economic, social. That such varied forms of violence against women still exist is the play’s unspoken message.