At the very outset of Lisa Rose’s one-woman show, Too Small to Tell, the writer and performer poses to the audience, "Why now?” Why revisit the numerous gruesome offenses of Harvey Weinstein when he is already doing time, and will likely die in jail, and when the global #MeToo movement his criminality ignited is nearly a decade old?"
Rose understands the question is rhetorical. The audience, composed almost entirely of women (I am one of only two men present), certainly interprets it that way. On the day I attended the performance, Cassie Ventura had been offering testimony against the rap mogul and multi-millionaire Sean "Diddy" Combs. Just a couple of weeks prior, the actor Russell Brand, once a darling of the far-left and now a friend to the far-right, had been accused of rape. Furthermore, the individual occupying the Oval Office is an adjudicated sexual abuser who once openly boasted he could do anything he wanted to women, famously stating: “When you’re famous you can do anything. You can grab them by the pussy.”
Meanwhile, the #MeToo movement has faced near-constant criticism since its beginning, notably from brothers Andrew and Tristan Tate, who disseminate a hatred of women and a vision of masculinity so brutal and banal it would be almost comical were it not so grave. The Tate brothers, like the deceased billionaire Epstein, the imprisoned soul singer R. Kelly, and the aforementioned Diddy, also face accusations of sex trafficking. And naturally, Weinstein himself is back in court. As I write this, a woman is testifying against him, alleging he sexually assaulted her during her teenage years. Consequently, the timing of this play appears particularly and brutally fitting.
The sexual assault of a teenager by Weinstein is what consumes the final act of this play. More precisely, it is what haunts Rose. The initial two acts detail how she came to work for the rapist and film producer in his London offices during the Nineties. This was a period when the films his company Miramax produced were celebrated by critics and laden with awards – The English Patient, Pulp Fiction, Life is Beautiful, The Piano, and Shakespeare in Love, among others, were all Miramax productions. For an aspiring film actor in the Nineties as Rose was, life revolved around Miramax’s world, around Weinstein’s world.
And we glean glimpses of what this world was like (and likely still is) as Rose relives early auditions. She informs a casting agent she is 24 before quickly realizing that, in an industry dominated by men, a woman's worth and value are closely tied to her age. Twenty-four is, for many, already over the hill. So, she shaves three years from her age. A director and his colleague instruct her to undress. She refuses but is later lectured by her flatmate Anna on the essence of acting, which she summarizes as standing where you are directed to stand, doing what you are directed to do, and saying what you are directed to say. This is all played for dark laughs, but it foreshadows the moral decay of what follows. Anna, a considerably more successful actor than Lisa, echoes the words of the lecherous director by accusing her of being unprofessional. Lisa, who embodies all the characters, always with ferocious and occasionally hilarious physical energy, portrays Anna as a mercenary, chain-smoking dilettante whose overbearing demeanor surely conceals the pain of the compliant and the collaborator.
Eventually, after enduring one unsuccessful audition too many and losing her job as a waitress, Lisa fortuitously secures employment at Miramax – the prominent company of the era, the coveted destination for actors, directors, writers, and aspiring producers. Even back then, even when Miramax was the absolute apex of international cool, Harvey Weinstein was known to be a menace. A colleague warns her about him before reassuring her that she’ll be fine, “because you’re Jewish”.
She plays Weinstein alternately as a foul-mouthed bully – the sort of man who would kick over a bucket of popcorn then demand a subordinate get on their hands and knees to pick up the kernels and refill the bucket
But, as with every other reassurance and excuse, this turns out to be boll**ks. Because although Rose was never assaulted by Weinstein, she was in his orbit. Harvey’s heliocentric hell sucked in everyone. Rose narrowly avoids one of his attacks whilst working for him in the Penthouse suite of the London Savoy.
She plays Weinstein alternately as a foul-mouthed bully – the sort of man who would kick over a bucket of popcorn then demand a subordinate get on their hands and knees to pick up the kernels and refill the bucket – and as a preening, puffed-up pillock, perpetually boasting of his achievements, which weren’t simply cinematographic but of world-changing social significance. “No one has done as much for the downtrodden as me.” “No one has done as much for art as me.” “No one has done as much for women as me.”
So, by the time we learn that a 17-year-old girl has inadvertently been left with Weinstein for an afternoon, it is as if we are hearing that a baby has been thrown into the cage of a hungry hyena. The play ends with Rose answering her own question: Why now? Because these things deserve to be said again and again. Because to repeat them is to fight against men like Weinstein. And they must keep being said until there are no more men like Weinstein.
So she tells us why but not before she does a very funny, if alarming, impression of Weinstein’s gangrenous penis, complete with bright purple helmet. I was reminded at this point of Baby Reindeer, where the horror is amplified rather than undermined by absurdism. Baby Reindeer also began as a one-person fringe show. Netflix, take note.
It is to her credit that she can pull this off after all that’s gone before. But the humour is very much in the spirit of revenge.
For where better to kick a man like Weinstein than in his diseased balls.
★★★★
‘Too Small to Tell’ is at Rotunda Theatre Brighton until May 20
To book: brightonfringe.org/events/too-small-to-tell/
