★★★

“an eye-catching tribute to millions of devalued female lives”

Animal spirits are roused, and a proto-feminist movement born, amid blood and viscera, in Mary and the Hyenas, a raucous musical re-telling of the short but impactful life of Mary Wollenstonecraft, the 18th century philosopher, writer and radical.

She died, aged 38, following complications giving birth to the girl who would grow up to write Frankenstein, and the show gives Mary the 10 days between birth and death to educate her daughter on how to be a woman in a hostile world.

The dilemma is this: give them the freedom to think and risk a life of restraint and frustration; or let them be ignorant and perhaps content with marriage and childcare.

Mother Mary inevitably chooses the former path – and sets about educating not only her own daughters but every daughter everywhere, riling the patriarchy no end and filling girls’ heads with discomforting notions of self-fulfilment and equality.

Rock chick Mary is brought to vivid life in a tour-de-force performance by Laura Elsworthy, tear-stained, pink-haired, sharp-elbowed and forever with a rebel yell on her lips. She presents Mary not as an invulnerable ideologue, but a woman susceptible to the very traps and manipulations she sees with such clarity elsewhere.

She lives and loves outrageously, and to her very great cost.

Elsworthy is supported by a five-strong backing group – Ainy Medina, Beth Crame, Elexi Walker, Kat Johns-Burke, Kate Hampson – who rise to meet the demands of a very physical production. They are forever scaling designer Sara Perks’ mountainous and boxy set, or donning hats, aprons, glasses, accents etc to create a full cast of characters. In between they belt out songs by Tor Maries (Billy Nomates).

It is a pity that the songs fail to ignite despite all the huffing and puffing on the embers. The shouty affirmations seem to be in search of a melody and the cold Human League style electro-pop doesn’t assist, draining the numbers of emotional connection. The lyrics are symptomatic of the production’s greatest failing. The sloganeering, however well meaning, is an easy go-to, filling the gaps when the story-telling flags. It is a call-and-response of diminishing returns.

Beyond the committed cast, the strengths of director Esther Richardson’s over busy but colourful production lie in the depiction of women conditioned to become little more than ornaments and brood mares. Humour is the most effective weapon in writer Marueen Lennon’s arsenal. She pricks the preening pomposity of the male intelligentsia who view Mary as an oddity to be treated warily and at arm’s length. The audience responds warmly to these infrequent sprigs of wry lampooning and crave more of the same.

(“I won’t be able to apply myself with a husband,’ says one would-be anatomist. “I bet they get in the way.”)

Mary and the Hyenas is an eye-catching tribute to millions of devalued female lives – and to one of endless significance.

HAVISHAM

Jack Studio Theatre

★★★

“The script is rich and lyrical although the elaborate metaphors occasionally lose their way”

We know Miss Havisham as the heartless manipulator of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. She is indelibly printed on our minds – dressed in cobwebs and a faded wedding gown, time frozen on the day she was jilted.

But how did she arrive at such an horrendous fate?

In her earnest solo production, writer and performer Heather Alexander aims to put paper-thin flesh on brittle bones, creating an origin story for the striking monster. She takes Miss Havisham from the misery of her childhood to the edge of love and fulfilment. The story that emerges is one of bitterness that accumulates over time like a hardening residue.

Under Dominique Gerrard’s formal direction, the busy set foretells of an eerie fate. It is dressed with bridal gowns and white veils, a clock ticking obtrusively but forever fixed at 20 minutes to nine.

Centre stage, there is a bed – or is it a coffin? Ghostly Miss Havisham rises from her slumber to tell a tale of a motherless girl, confused, unloved and fearful of God, death and her brutish father.

There is something of Norma “Sunset Boulevard” Desmond in Alexander’s feline physicality and phrasing: wide eyes, angular posing and an epic grandeur forever tumbling towards tantrum.

Her tragic isolation is underscored by her differences: rich amid the poor, girl among boys, a child with everything but nothing that matters. In a pivotal school room blunder she confuses Medusa for an angel and becomes in her own mind, a bad girl, a cursed girl, destined only to wound and harden hearts.

After a poor start in life, matters get worse, and the first act is a testing run of merciless catastrophes. The script is rich and lyrical although the elaborate metaphors occasionally lose their way. (Is “jumping into the box of life” really an image of freedom and exploration?)

After the rigours of the first act – where the tone is relentlessly morbid – Miss Havisham finally blossoms. She emerges in London a young woman capable of catching the eye of James, a dashing actor who appears loving and attentive if, er, unreliable.

Dotted about the story are reminders of the culmination – Satis House, a tragic girl named Stella, the ominous marshes hiding secrets in their billowing fog. We wonder if this Miss Havisham will grow sufficiently to match Dickens’ capacious version. We sit like engineers planning a trans-continental railway hoping the tracks from east and west will meet precisely.

The answer is: not quite, but only out by an inch or two.

Dickens’ Havisham is necessarily a gothic horror, a fully-formed, self-starting force of vengeance and malevolence. Alexander’s is a more modern interpretation: a woman as a reaction to her environment and trauma, a pitiful victim of men and their predations.

In an accomplished display, Heather Alexander fully embodies this icon of literature. It is a well-organised portrayal; perhaps not the baroque portrait it aspires to be but, instead, a chilling mosaic compiled from fragments and shards.

MARY AND THE HYENAS

Wilton’s Music Hall

★★★

“an eye-catching tribute to millions of devalued female lives”

MARY AND THE HYENAS

Wilton’s Music Hall

Reviewed on 20th March 2025

by Giles Broadbent

Photography by Tom Arran

Previously reviewed at this venue:

MARY AND THE HYENAS

MARY AND THE HYENAS

MARY AND THE HYENAS

HAVISHAM

Jack Studio Theatre

★★★

“The script is rich and lyrical although the elaborate metaphors occasionally lose their way”

HAVISHAM

Jack Studio Theatre

Reviewed on 13th March 2025

by Giles Broadbent

Photography by Peter Mould

Previously reviewed at this venue:

HAVISHAM

HAVISHAM

HAVISHAM