The Girls Of Slender Means

13 April 2024 to 4 May 2024

Drama adapted by Gabriel Quigley, from the novel by Muriel Spark
Directed by Roxana Silbert

‘As they realised themselves in varying degrees, few people alive at the time were more delightful, more ingenious, more movingly lovely, and, as it might happen, more savage, than the girls of slender means.’

Set in the summer of 1945, in a hostel for the ‘Pecuniary Convenience and Social Protection of Ladies of Slender Means below the age of Thirty Years, who are obliged to reside apart from their Families in order to follow an Occupation in London.’, The Girls of Slender Means follows the adventures of the women who live there. They do their best to act as if the war never happened. They practice elocution, and jostle one another over suitors and a fabulous Schiaparelli gown, which they each use whenever the occasion demands. But behind the girls' giddy literary and amorous explorations hides an exquisite fragility and sinister peril, as they strive to survive 'when all the nice people were poor'.

The Girls of Slender Means is a story of glamour in austerity, women at work, women at play, and women’s wit.