This production, which has recently opened at the Vaudeville Theatre, had its premier at the Globe in August 2018. Moving from the Globe can be difficult due to the nature of the space but it really feels like the company have cut a portion of the theatre and placed it in the heart of the West End.
Following the story of Emilia Bassano, the ‘Dark Lady’ erased form History. A girl from a good background educated and taught to contain herself but has a huge voice needing to be heard underneath. From the tender age of 7 years old we see her grow up into a young woman and head straight through into adult life. An aspiring poet, she couldn’t have her work published because women could only have religious text published into the world. After some clever thinking she, and her students, come up with a way to get around this and start to educate Women throughout London.
What this play does is wake us up. It shows us how similar our times are to then, with the links made by Morgan Lloyd Malcolm (writer) between this time period and modern day we can make the parallels between the two societies. Its amazing how far we’ve come, of course, but its also astonishing how little progress we’ve made in this huge amount of time.
