A True Story That Is Shocking, Scandalous and Sometimes Amusing

The Party Girls
Devonshire Park Theatre, Eastbourne
Until Saturday, September 27, 2025

The Party Girls which is shocking, scandalous and sometimes amusing, tells the amazing story of the aristocratic, notorious and often outrageous Metford sisters.

An apt description of them by a journalist was “Diana, the fascist, Jessica, the communist, Unity, the Hitler-lover, Nancy, the novelist; Deborah, the duchess and Pamela, the unobtrusive poultry connoisseur”.

Amy Rosenthal’s intriguing play deals with five of the six sisters and their extremely conflicting political views. It. spans more than 30 years, from Hitler’s rise in the 1930s to 1969.

Most of this true story is engagingly told through the eyes of the complex Jessica ‘Decca’ Metford, who leaves her privileged high society life in England for the Spanish Civil War and later the USA as she tries to stick to her communist beliefs.

But playwright Rosenthal (who happens to be actress, Maureen Lipman’s daughter) expects a lot of her audiences. By jumping back and forth between decades the play is sometimes confusing, despite the best efforts of director Richard Beecham with the help of ‘flashed up’ dates and locations, together with clever, inventive scene changes by Simon Kenny.

The script’s use of pet names, nicknames and first names does not make it easier to be sure which sister is which.

Fortunately, the cast are excellent.

Emma Noakes brilliantly portrays torn character Jessica, especially when giving conflicting signals to her ardent admirer Bob Treuhaft, an American-Hungarian Jew, a difficult role convincingly filled by Joe Coen.

But Ell Potter steals some scenes as the loud, frumpish Unity, who repeatedly refers to her close relationship with Hitler. Ironically, Ell reveals in the programme: “I do wonder how Unity would feel if she knew that, some 80 years after her death, she would be being played by a queer woman with Jewish ancestry.”

It emphasises Ell’s great acting skills that she is so convincing as a woman who belonged to Hitler’s inner circle of friends and was a supporter of Nazism, fascism and antisemitism.

The traitorous Diana, well played by Elisabeth Dermot Walsh, is also attracted to Hitler and eventually becomes the wife of British fascist Oswald Mosley.

Confronted by Jessica about the Holocaust and the killing of six million Jews, she retorts coldly: “Six million is an exaggeration, and sounds so much more dramatic than one or two million.”

Kirsty Besterman’s Nancy uses witty metaphors, befitting a novelist, and Flora Spencer-Longhurst’s Debo shows plenty of youthful exuberance,  while ignoring the political exchanges going on around her. Debo, the youngest and last surviving of the six Mitford sisters, went on to marry the Duke of Devonshire.

It all adds up to a thought-provoking true-life story – and performance.