The Yard Theatre in Hackney has a reputation for serving up out-there work. As it moves into its new, larger venue, that remains unchanged. Its new production, The World is Full of Married Men, is based on the 1968 debut novel by Jackie Collins and produced by Malmö Dockteater, a Swedish theatre company known for making puppet shows for adults – yes, all the characters are performed by dolls.
Collins’s sexually frank novel caused a scandal on publication – it was banned in Australia, and the romantic novelist Barbara Cartland called it “filthy”. This new adaptation, translated from Swedish by playwright Lulu Raczka, is faithful to the book’s swinging ’60s London setting, a world of swanky penthouses and even swankier nightclubs. It tells the story of David and Linda, a middle-aged couple whose marriage is collapsing, thanks in no small part to the fact he is having an affair with a much younger actor, leaving Linda feeling undesired. All of this is acted out by Barbie-like dolls, albeit ones that have rather more under their trousers than the usual mound of disconcertingly smooth plastic.
The show is the work of Swedish theatre maker Erik Holmström. Since founding Malmö Dockteater in 2015, he has made a series of genre-straddling shows which really push what you can do with puppets. He’s made documentaries and autobiographical shows, but he’s always been interested in the potential of puppets to tell stories about sex, something the characters in The World is Full of Married Men have frequently. Over the course of the evening there is a lot of thrusting, sucking and licking.
All of this takes place on a series of lovingly crafted miniature sets, including a doll-sized mirrored bathroom complete with jacuzzi, and a mini nightclub with an illuminated dance floor. Actors Kajsa Ericsson and Erik Ollson control the dolls – but they occasionally enter the world of the play themselves by way of greenscreen.
Holmström prefers not to work with performers with much experience of puppetry. “I like to see the work and the struggle on stage,” he says. Watching Ericsson and Olsson carefully manipulate the dolls while speaking their lines is part of the pleasure of the production.
The show opened in 2021 in Malmö and has gone on to become something of a cult hit in Sweden. The dolls even appeared in a pop video by Swedish musician Håkan Hellström.
While there is a lot of bedroom business in The World is Full of Married Men, it’s also a study of the sexual mores of the time and the way in which women were viewed. In its depiction of how the film industry misuses women, it still feels depressingly relevant. That’s part of what makes the show work, Olsson says. The book is not just a salacious page-turner, it’s “a 50-year-old testimony and whistleblowing that had been forgotten, and in our time has taken on a new meaning”.
The World is Full of Married Men is at the Yard Theatre from July 21–August 1.
