About this event
A musical play from Busy Lizzies Theatre Company and Long Way Home Productions.
“Musical theatre at its best” ~ Brighton and Hove News
Based on the little-known story of the women who worked on canals during World War Two, Idle Women is an original musical created by six Sussex-based actors and musicians.
In the early 1940s, 40 female volunteers left their homes, despite their inexperience, to ensure safe passage of essential supplies between London and Birmingham on the waterways. The work was relentlessly gruelling, they had to quickly adapt and learn the hard ways of life on “the cut”.
However, these journeys were also rich with community and connection with nature; they offered a chance to experience an entirely different way of life.
The Busy Lizzies creative team, brought together by musician Phil Jones, have created a story around four fictional women and the challenges and also the liberty they experienced.
There are songs of the characters’ hopes, secrets, and desires. The dilemmas the women navigate along the Grand Union Canal test their relationships and shake beliefs to the core.
Idle Women is based in truth and explores themes that still resonate today: friendship, purpose, gender, sexuality, and identity.
Cast: Emma Baars, Aaron Coomer, Catriona Judt, Elizabeth Kroon, Maple Preston-Ellis. Musicians: Nicola Bloom, Phil Jones, Scott Smith.
