★★★

“Greig’s encapsulation of the sandwich generation – elderly parent to care for and young children too – is a masterclass in empathy and subtlety”

There’s a sign on the wall on the way into the Donmar theatre warning patrons about the use of herbal cigarettes in the production. There is no sign pre-figuring the far greater traumas the audience is about to experience: the indignity of death, the intrusions of humiliating healthcare, the cruel tricks of a failing brain.

Little wonder then that daughter Bo is keen on a swift departure for Beth, her mother, who has suffered dementia of late, and debilitating strokes.

Bo frets about everything, always has done, so she’s extra keen to convey to the nurses that her actions are merciful and not, as they occasionally hint, cruel and self-serving. Indeed, this was her mother’s repeated wish – pills, pillow over the face, nil by mouth etc.

She was a firecracker in her day, indomitable and difficult, full of life – not this half-inhabited skeleton.

Writer-director Anna Mackmin mines her own experiences to inform a difficult piece that leaps back and forth through time to capture scenes from a fractious mother-daughter relationship.

There are significant problems with the play, but the casting decisions mitigate many. Tamsin Greig as everywoman Bo and Celia Imrie as the feckless bohemian Beth paper over many a structural flaw. They are superb. Funny and touching and bracing. Greig’s encapsulation of the sandwich generation – elderly parent to care for and young children too – is a masterclass in empathy and subtlety.

Bo is dowdy, unkempt and frazzled, scratching out a life in the grout between vast slabs of thankless obligation. Her mother – a peacock in her day – has spent years pointing out her daughter’s shortcomings to the point where Bo has seemly embraced the criticisms in a grim homage. And yet, occasionally Beth (never “mum”) is an inspiration too, a source of joy and laughter.

Fittingly, designer Lez Brotherston’s stage has the operatic hospital bed on a raised stage, surrounded by medical paraphernalia and appearing more like a courtly throne. A step down and we’re in Beth’s ramshackle cottage, firmly frozen in the free-loving 1960s. Here she keeps her loom and her woven artworks. A vast black backdrop fills in some gaps with scratchy projections.

Unfortunately, the play – as baggy as Bo’s “Greenham Common” cardigan – has nowhere particularly to go with this set-up and offers few revelations beyond the Ab-Fab dynamic of selfish mother and attendant child.

There’s a certain shocking delight watching Celia Imrie swear like a trooper or provide a play-by-play recitation of her sexual antics, but this is always going to offer a diminishing return.

Director Anna Mackmin has failed to press writer Anna Mackmin on some key questions. Is it worth two hours? What do we learn? Does the play need another few minutes in the oven to be truly ready?

Her script captures scenes from their life when Bo is six, 18 and off to university (needy mum is desperate not to be left behind), in her 30s, 40s and so on, as though Beth’s failing brain is compiling a highlights reel. But once we have seen one flashback, we have seen them all, and the absence of progress ramps up the need for mawkish sentimentality as filler.

The saving grace is experiencing Tasmin Greig close up in the Donmar’s intimate space. She manages to find grandeur in the gruelling mundane and it is compensation enough.

THE DIVINE MRS S at the Hampstead Theatre

★★★★

“A delightful mix of the traditional and the contemporary.”

In her time, Sarah Siddons was known as the Queen of Drury Lane, renowned for her roles in Shakespeare tragedies – especially her Lady Macbeth. She hung out with the top dramatists of the time, including David Garrick and Samuel Johnson. She had the leading artists fawning over her, desperate for her to be the subject of their paintings. Yet this powerful woman also personified the powerlessness of women at the time. It is the tail end of the eighteenth century. Women were deprived of money, couldn’t own property, and had no real legal rights. No control over their children – nor even their own bodies.

April De Angelis’ play “The Divine Mrs S” takes us backstage, shedding light on the personal tragedy behind the grand ‘tragedies’ portrayed under the spotlights. Sarah Siddons’ acting career was under the direct control of her imposing brother (actor and manager John Kemble), and it was her husband who received her fees and signed her contracts. She was shunted off on a provincial tour when it looked like her acting would upstage her male counterparts. All the while her children appeared to be dropping like flies all around her. But De Angelis, whilst highlighting the dreadful state of affairs, steers well clear of worthy polemic or earnest tragedy, and instead dresses Siddons’ fight for self-expression and self-determination in a couple of hours of very fine comedy.

The language has a contemporary feel while harking back to Restoration Comedy, French Farce, and even touches of Commedia Dell’arte thrown in. De Angelis pokes fun at all the right characters, but doesn’t let righteousness intrude. In occasionally breaking the fourth wall, a charming self-deprecation is allowed to colour Siddons’ earnestness as she conspires with the audience, commenting on everyone’s foibles – including her own.

This mix of feistiness and fun is in no better hands than Rachael Stirling. The sharpness of Stirling’s delivery of Siddons’ words matches the biting wit De Angelis has given those words. Set mainly in the confines of the dressing room it encapsulates the whole world of the theatre. Dominic Rowan neatly conveys the lecherous misogyny of theatre manager Kemble, hamming it up to ridiculous heights when called upon to actually ‘act’ on the stage next to his far more talented sister. Anushka Chakravarti shines as Siddons’ all-knowing maid, dresser, personal assistant and ultimately counsellor. Meanwhile Eva Feiler, Sadie Shimmin and Gareth Snook multirole in excess to bring all the other characters onstage, in the right order and in the right costume. Most notable of these is Feiler’s Joanna Baillie; the writer who has to conceal the fact that she is a woman otherwise her plays will not get staged. When Kemble discovers her true gender he pulls her play, even though it is the most successful production he’s had for a while.

Even that contentious issue is dealt with in good humour. They say that if you want people to listen to you, the best way is to make them laugh. And there are even more laughs in the second act. And also more pertinence. The concept gets trickier, but the message gets clearer as Stirling more frequently steps out of character, allowing her to cast a contemporary perspective on the eighteenth-century restrictions imposed on the woman she is playing.

“The Divine Mrs S” can’t really be labelled a comedy or a tragedy. But it encapsulates both, and addresses serious issues – serving them up as light entertainment. Historically that would classify it as a ‘Problem Play’. But I have no problem with this one at all. A delightful mix of the traditional and the contemporary.

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Donmar Warehouse

★★★

“Greig’s encapsulation of the sandwich generation – elderly parent to care for and young children too – is a masterclass in empathy and subtlety”

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Donmar Warehouse

Reviewed on 21st February 2025

by Giles Broadbent

Photography by Johan Persson

Previously reviewed at this venue:

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THE DIVINE MRS S at the Hampstead Theatre

★★★★

“A delightful mix of the traditional and the contemporary.”