The Cat's Meow - Lace Market Theatre - Review

★★★★☆

Lace Market Theatre opens its 2026 season with Steven Peros’s The Cat’s Meow, a glossy and unsettling play based on one of Hollywood’s most enduring unsolved scandals. As the first show of the year, it has clearly set a benchmark for what Lace Market hopes to achieve in the months ahead. The question, then, is not whether The Cat’s Meow is an interesting choice — it absolutely is — but whether this intimate, dialogue-heavy drama can fully harness its true-crime intrigue to keep us hooked all the way to the end.

Rosie Wallace as Louella Parsons in The Cat's Meow.

Steven Peros’s play unfolds during a weekend gathering of the rich and famous aboard William Randel Hearst’s lavish yacht. As champagne flows freely, egos collide, and flirtations spark between Hollywood royalty: newspaper tycoon Hearst, his lover Marion Davies, producer Thomas Ince, screen icon Charlie Chaplin, gossip columnist Louella Parsons, and a selection of writers, actors, and hangers-on. What begins as a sparkling comedy of manners, full of witty exchanges and status games, gradually darkens as a shocking death occurs. From that moment on, the play becomes a tense study of power, reputation, and the lengths people will go to protect themselves when scandal threatens to surface.

One of the great challenges of The Cat’s Meow is that every character is based on a real person, many of whom arrive on stage with a legacy attached to them. The Lace Market Theatre cast handles this with impressive care. Accents, physicality, and posture clearly signal status, nationality, and personality, helping the audience navigate a large ensemble with relative ease. There is a shared understanding among the cast of the world they inhabit, which gives the production a pleasing sense of cohesion, even when the script itself becomes dense with information.

Alison Hope is, without question, the standout performer of the evening as Elinor Glyn. Acting as both participant and narrator, Hope has the difficult task of guiding us through the story while remaining entirely rooted in it. She achieves this with remarkable ease. Her performance is beautifully restrained; she simply exists in the world of the play, reacting truthfully rather than pushing for effect. Her comedic timing is sharp, her delivery warm, and her sincerity disarming. It is a performance that never feels like it is “trying” to impress, and that is precisely why it does.

Micah Darmola’s William Randolph Hearst is immediately recognisable as a man accustomed to power. There is something almost cartoonish about his presence; a hulking, larger-than-life confidence befitting of a cinematic mogul. Darmola gives us a Hearst who is domineering and quietly terrifying when things begin to slip out of his control. This becomes especially compelling in Act Two, where Hearst’s blind panic following the accidental death drives the drama forward. Watching Darmola’s Hearst manipulate different characters in subtly different ways is genuinely fascinating, and these scenes are among the production’s strongest.

Holly Cooke (Marion Davies) and Jake Black (Charlie Chaplin)

Jake Black arguably has the most daunting task: portraying Charlie Chaplin without slipping into impersonation. Wisely, Black avoids the familiar over-the-top, slapstick personality and instead presents a more human, sleazier version of Chaplin, which aligns far more closely with Peros’s script. This choice works well dramatically, grounding Chaplin in the same morally murky world as everyone else on stage. Though I will say, I did miss the trademark moustache!

Mark Anderson brings energy and enthusiasm to the role of producer Tom Ince. His Ince is peppy, ambitious, and constantly hustling, clearly using this weekend as a networking opportunity. Anderson also shares a convincing on-stage chemistry with Ksenia Tsymbal as Margaret Livingstone, Ince’s mistress. Tsymbal gives Livingstone a softness that contrasts nicely with the sharper, Hollywood edges of the surrounding characters, making their relationship feel more than just a plot device.

Holly Cooke’s Marion Davies undergoes one of the most striking transformations of the evening. In the early scenes, she is bold, brash, the life and soul of the party. As events unfold, Cooke gradually strips away this confidence, revealing a broken, frightened woman trapped by love and loyalty. The latter stages of her performance are chillingly effective. It would have been wonderful to see Cooke given a little more freedom to fully unleash Davies’s exuberance in Act One, as the blocking and crowded stage sometimes hold her back, but her emotional journey remains compelling.

The Cast of The Cat's Meow at the Lace Market Theatre.

Rosie Wallace’s Louella Parsons is sharp and watchful, always seeming to calculate what information is worth keeping and what might be sold. Wallace captures the dangerous power of a gossip columnist who knows exactly how valuable secrets can be. Her extreme physical and facial reactions are also devilishly funny additions to the play. 

One area where the production could be strengthened is in its management of focus during ensemble scenes. With such a large cast sharing the stage, background actors are often competing with, rather than supporting, the central narrative. Choices like characters entering from the audience are engaging, but the heightened ‘look-at-me’ physicality used to establish character drew attention away from the dialogue already in progress on stage. This is most notable in a scene where multiple strands of action occur simultaneously: a sex scene stage right, a drunken party stage left, and an exchange important to the plot centre stage. In this instance, using stillness or a tableau for non-focal action would ensure the story beats land with clarity — rather than becoming a distraction that left me a little confused.

Chloe Davie (Celia Moore) and Chloe Martin (Didi Dawson) add texture and social context to the yacht, contributing to the sense of a decadent, morally flexible elite. Will White’s George Thomas and Paul Spruce’s Joseph Willicombe provide solid support, grounding the ensemble and fleshing out the social ecosystem surrounding Hearst. Bernard Whelan and Linda Hoyland, as Dr and Mrs Goodman, bring a welcome steadiness and realism to the later scenes, particularly as the stakes become higher and the moral lines blur.

Behind the scenes, Charlotte Hukin’s direction is largely assured. She clearly understands the piece's tone and balances comedy and menace effectively, particularly in Act Two, when the play truly comes alive. That said, the transitions between scenes feel overlong and disrupt the otherwise strong pacing. Watching stagehands move furniture under blue light for several minutes becomes distracting rather than atmospheric, and these moments would benefit from being tightened or reimagined.

Linda Hoyland (Mrs Goodman) and Ksenia Tsymbal (Margaret Livingstone)

Guy Evans’s set design is functional and evocative, establishing the yacht setting without overwhelming the space. Combined with the excellent costume work by Amanda Pearce and Max Bromley, the production is visually coherent and period-appropriate. The costumes are especially effective in differentiating characters and communicating personality, even among the men in suits – no small achievement!

Amy Bermudez’s lighting design is a particular highlight. With multiple conversations often happening across the stage, Bermudez uses light intelligently to guide focus and heighten emotion. Downlighting and backlighting add depth and tension, particularly in the play’s more secretive moments.

At times, the dialogue leans towards explaining events and emotions rather than allowing the audience to discover them for themselves. Moments such as revealing an affair might land more powerfully if conveyed through unspoken behaviour instead of direct exposition. A handful of relationships in Act One could be more clearly defined through interaction, rather than a flurry of introductions and explanations. Once those foundations are in place in Act Two, however, the storytelling gains real momentum, racing ahead with confidence and becoming extremely dynamic and engaging.

The Cat’s Meow is a confident and engaging start to Lace Market Theatre’s 2026 season. It is an intriguing, talky, and thought-provoking play, brought to life by a committed cast and a creative team clearly invested in the material. For audiences interested in Hollywood history, true crime, or simply well-crafted drama, this production is well worth seeking out.