Emilia
Morgan Lloyd Malcolm
Directed by Pam Redrup
Questors Theatre Ealing
Star rating: 3.5
In 2017 I was at a press conference at Shakespeare’s Globe where Michelle Terry, new in post as artistic director announced that she had commissioned a new all-female play for 2018. This, she explained, was why she was not committing to quotas of male and female actors in casts. Thus was Morgan Lloyd Malcolm’s Emilia born. I saw it at the original production at the Globe and enjoyed it again when it transferred into the West End. Since then I have seen it at least twice more elsewhere – including a memorable production at Mountview drama school in Peckham.And now this – in the very impressive Questors Theatre which I was visiting for the first time.
Emilia is loosely based on the sketchy story of Emilia Bassano, a ground breaking 17th century published poet “known” to Shakespeare (and other chaps). It is possible that she was his “Dark Lady.” Maybe, the play speculates, she was the inspiration for much of his work. Perhaps, given the quality of her poetry, she gave him ideas or maybe she said or wrote things which he purloined. Women, after all, were not supposed to have creative ideas or compete with men in any way. It makes for a quirky, moving, timeless feminist statement as Lloyd Malcolm’s text dances cheerfully in an out of historic formal speech, witty modern English complete with asides, and quotations from Shakespeare.
Lloyd Malcom envisions Emila (did he really pinch her name for Desdemona’s companion in Othello?) as a richly multi-faceted character played by three characters, usually all on stage together, at different stages of her life. Shekinah Singh finds warmth, anger, passion and sheer determination to be recognised in Emilia 1. Yasimin Nankya’s measured performance of Emilia 2 gives us rueful but still passionate woman arguing for equality. And Sunita Dugal delights as the calm, reflective older Emilia narrating her life story. And Kerala McGrall’s casually charismatic Shakespeare ensures that we understand why Emilia is drawn to him, furious as she is at the way he treats her. “I am only seen when needed” she declares angrily, early in the play.
The ensemble, from which other characters emerge, does a pleasing job including much stylised shuffling on and off stage and creating shapes reminiscent of the swans in Swan Lake – movement director Sophie George. Among other cameos Stella Robinson is fun as the camper-than-camp Lord Larnier, who make a marriage of convenience with Emilia.
And all this is played out on one of the most stunning sets I’ve seen anywhere in quite a while. The Questors 300-seat theatre has a spacious thrust playing space on which Bron Blake has created a white and sepia environment made of books and writing. There are columns and a balustrade punctuated with piles of books and the downstage paving stones are covered in writing. It’s as dramatic as it is pertinent.
Emilia speaks to us all and this production articulates the message as clearly as I’ve seen it done anywhere. “As I grow I must also shrink”? Not any more. Come on women, there’s a fucking house to burn down.
