The telling, it is said, is essentially Joseph L Mankiewicz’s screenplay treated as if it were theatre text. It’s a compelling piece of staging presented with a slow strong reveal by designer Jan Versweyveld (Van Hove/Broadway’s The Crucible, A View From the Bridge). All About Eve is about the women who roam the stage and call it their home, basking in the spotlight and taking on the attention as something akin to love.  Channing, a middle-aged Broadway star is getting rave reviews and standing ovations nightly in the plays directed by her lover, solidly portrayed by the wonderfully eye-rolling Julian Ovenden (‘Downton Abbey’, ‘The Crown’).  She is not an easy one to manage, just ask her hot-shot playwright friend, Lloyd, played forcibly by Rhashan Stone (TV Series ‘Strike Back‘) and his wife and producing partner, Karen, deftly played to perfection by Olivier winning Monica Dolan (RSC’s The Seagull).

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Margo is oblivious at first to the young woman’s heroic story, but slowly she turns with curiosity and in that moment, she is caught, like almost everyone else in the room but her personal dresser. It’s that change, heightened by projection, that captivates us in her dynamic. The blank stare that changes into fascination, propelling her to insert the young Eve into her household, without realizing that soon, as we in the audience are all very aware of, she will become the bitterest of  rivals, attempting to tear her down so she herself may rise up into her spotlight.

From big screen theatrical glamour and drama, to the Steppenwolf‘s transfer to the Dorfman of Bruce Norris’ Downstate co-produced by The National Theatre, we venture strongly forward, digging in for this controversial and dynamically real argument about punishment and survival in a morally ambiguous dimension. Authentically moving and disturbing, the play begins with a victim coming forward to confront his past and the perpetrator of sexual abuse he experienced when he was a young child from his piano teacher. It rolls out with awkward anger and defiance, matched and returned with simpleton kindness and compassion in a group home in downstate Illinois, filled to overflowing with confined and convicted child abusing men. Norris (Claybourne Park) expertly fills the flat with real individuals, each tormented in their own way and manner. The troubled Andy, played valiantly by Tim Hopper (Primary Stages’ Him) has come to the house in order to get a more fleshed out retributive confession from the wheel chair bound Fred, played with penitent perfection by Francis Guinan (Steppenwolf/Broadway’s August: Osage County) to help with his recovery program. It’s a harrowing journey, listening to the two interact, filling the theatrical air with pain and frustration in a complicated mix of empathy and remorse. It’s a moment not for the faint of heart or head.

But the conflict really lies in the powerful construction of Fred’s fellow inmate, Dee, played to the stellar skies by K. Todd Freeman (Broadway’s Airline Highway) who shows little patience with the angry Andy. He also has little remorse for the problematic long-term relationship he had with a young boy he was completely in ‘love’ with, who was, quite naturally, one of the Lost Boys in a touring production of Peter Pan. “He wasn’t a young man, he was a 14 year old boy“. Dee’s fiery anger at his controlled position mirrors with distortion the aggressive hetero Gio, powerfully portrayed with gusto by Glenn Davis (Steppenwolf’s The Christians). He lives out his restricted days in a state of denial, guilty of a sexual offense with an underage teenage girl but shows more defiance than guilt. Is that a double standard of offensiveness or a complacent reality? Filling out the unhappy foursome is Felix, played by the talented Eddie Torres (director/Old Globe’s Familiar) who struggles almost innocently, with the idea that his love for his daughter was something inappropriate, dangerous, and wrong. His scene with the parole officer, authentically played to exhausted perfection by Cecilia Noble (National’s The Amen Corner) paints in detail the tangled webs of deceit that lives inside the paedophile and the person.

It’s a complex scenario, overflowing with compassion and conflict, asking many difficult questions about the never ending punishment within the prison-like world of sex offenders in America who have served their time, but are basically never released. “It’s my house, and I live here“, and in that house, the cast soars even while required to wear their ankle bracelets, only leaving the character of one victim behind mired in a return visit that never truly registers as being as human as all the others. It’s a disservice in a way to the victims of such abuse, but Downstate makes it up to those lost in the sex offender quagmire of the punitive system.

McIntosh’s Anne of Cleves has fun enjoying life as a divorcee living large in her own castle, thanks to Henry VIII, and Richard-Noel’s Catherine of Aragon, dismissing Stapleton’s Catherine Parr as the least relevant one, playful embraces the sharp-tongued wit of this frothy exploration of female victimhood and the demand to be remembered. The choreography by Carrie-Anne Ingrouille (ZooNation Dance Company) hits all the right pop gum marks, accentuating the sparkly black costumes by Gabriella Slade lit by the enthusiastic concert lighting of Tim Deiling. Emerging forward at the Edinburgh fringe as a student production, the lively entertaining show has amassed a following that fills the Arts Theatre most days and nights. It’s sassy and fun, and one wisely executed (excuse the pun) thesis on girl power, strutting forward, demanding to be taken seriously to the sound of harpsichord remixes.