Princess & The Hustler

There is nowhere more appropriate for Princess & The Hustler to be performed than at the innovative Bristol Old Vic, given that this new play documents the story of the infamous Bristol race actions of 1963. As such, it was an honour to be sitting in the audience with Paul Stephenson OBE: the very man who spearheaded those pivotal events 56 years ago and who is rightly name-checked in the script.

Written by Bristol-based Chinonyerem Odimba (who was also behind the all-female production of Medea at Bristol Old Vic two years ago), Princess & The Hustler focuses on 10-year-old Phyllis Princess James who, in 1963, is determined to win the glamorous Weston-super-Mare Beauty Contest. But Bristol in 1963 is a city on the cusp of change as the black community start campaigning for their basic rights in the face of hostility.

All of this means that young Princess has to work extra hard to find out what true beauty really means. Chinonyerem explains in an interview with The Bristol Magazine that she wanted to “write a story that spoke to what I call ‘black girl joy’ – a celebration of what it is to be a young, black, British girl full of dreams for the future, and the joys of being young and innocent, as well as the magic of that.”  

As Princess, Kudzai Sitima puts in a strong and compelling performance that guides us through the events her family is at the centre of, and through her innocent eyes we share with her as she learns about the realities and injustices of the world. 

On Christmas Day, Princess and her older brother Junior (Fode Simbo) and hardworking mother Mavis (Donna Berlin) are settling down to a modest meal when their day is interrupted by the return of 'the hustler', aka Wendell (Seun Shote) - Mavis' husband who has been absent for all of Princess' life. To cap things off, he has brought with him his younger daughter Lorna (Emily Burnett)... who has a white mother.

This family drama provides the focus for Princess & The Hustler. As the family initially resists the return of Wendell but welcomes Lorna, the arrival of the newcomers sparks unrest. At school, Princess starts to realise that she is different from her new sister, who is suddenly much more popular than black-skinned Princess ever was. Mavis' friend Margot (Jade Yourell) reveals her casual racism, when she agrees that black people have no place taking jobs from white people. While Wendell throws himself into the 60-day Bristol bus boycott, in protest at the bus companies refusing to employ black people. Against all of this, Princess struggles to come to terms with a different kind of beauty and her lifelong dream of winning the Weston-super-Mare Beauty Contest.

Chinonyerem's script is believable and emotive; there were lots of audience members dabbing their eyes by the end of the performance. While Simon Kenney's recreation of 1960s' interiors and fashions is both jarring and fun to soak up.

Princess & The Hustler is an important new play that tells the story of a significant point in Bristol's history, and shows us that there are still many lessons we need to learn.

Princess & The Hustler is performed at Bristol Old Vic until 23 February 2019. Click here for more information and to buy tickets.

You can read a recent interview with Chinonyerem in The Bristol Magazine here.

Wise Children

Photo: Steve Tanner

Emma Rice’s adaptation of former Bristolian Angela Carter’s novel Wise Children is quite easily my favourite show that I have seen at Bristol Old Vic in several years. It is faultless.

Bristol theatre goers will know director Emma Rice from her years of work with the wonderful Kneehigh Theatre Company (Tristan & Yseult, The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk, Brief Encounters etc), and more recently her brief tenure at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London. She has now launched her own theatre company, also called Wise Children, and this production of Angela Carter’s final book is their debut show. And what a way to make an entrance!

Photo: Steve Tanner

Everything about Wise Children is deliciously over the top. It is camp, musical and sensational. It is a delirious celebration of the theatre, of the spectacle and of that business called show. It is also holding a mirror up to the claim that actors like to make that the company they work with is all just one big happy family… except it often isn’t. Because at the heart of Wise Children are twin sisters Nora and Dora Chance, who have been deserted by their biological family but embraced by Grandma Chance who takes the orphaned babies to her heart and brings them up as her own. Sparking a degenerate family tree of adopted family connections.

Nora and Dora originally come from a big theatrical family. Their father Melchior Hazard (and his twin brother Peregrine Hazard) are both acclaimed actors. Their grandparents Estella and Ranulph Hazard were also actors, with Estella known for being the best Hamlet who ever graced the stage. This Victorian female Hamlet also hints at Wise Children’s fondness for characters switching sex, skin colour, age and anything else at the drop of a hat. Not to mention the adoration for Shakespeare himself that runs through the entire production. So it's no wonder that Nora and Dora also take to the stage.

Photo: Steve Tanner

In Emma Rice’s hands, Wise Children is an utterly joyous, colourful, spectacular show that will tickle all of your senses, as well as leave you a little horrified towards the end. With most of the cast slotting into a handful of roles, it is hard to single out a particular lead, which also gives the production a seamless flow. As showgirl-era Dora and Nora, Melissa James and Omari Douglas are inevitably fabulous; and as Grandma Chance, Katy Owen enjoys a delightfully silly role. And I always love Kneehigh stalwart Patrycja Kujawska, who only has relatively small parts in Wise Children but still manages to effortlessly capture your attention even when she is left of stage in the background of a scene.

Wise Children is an utterly magnificent production. I need to go and see it again. Soon.

You can read more about Angela Carter’s life in Bristol in my book The Women Who Built Bristol: Volume One.

Click here for more information about Wise Children and to buy tickets. Wise Children is performed at Bristol Old Vic until 16 February 2019, after which it continues its tour around the UK. Click here for tour details.

'The Call' - Edith Ayrton Zangwill

Things that are thrown out of windows during the narrative of The Call include (but are not limited to) prison food, Bovril, inedible rock cakes and copies of The Vote magazine. Given the force with which Edith Ayrton Zangwill’s excellent 1924 novel rattles through its nine-year period, it is no surprising that the undesirable elements are discarded. Though, I should add, the hurled copy of The Vote is swiftly replaced following a fresh purchase of the magazine by the determined would-be reader.

In 2018, it is of course only right that a publisher of forgotten books by women authors should publish a book about the suffrage movement, and in The Call Persephone Books has chosen a mighty volume. It’s long, it’s sprawling and it calls on a catalogue of wondrous elements. It’s fair to say it’s one of my favourite ever Persephone Books (and I’ve read about two thirds of their 130 to date).

Our shero Ursula is deemed the eccentric daughter of a social butterfly in a well-to-do London home. She hides away in her laboratory upstairs in the servants’ quarters, conducting endless experiments into gases. Her charming mother frankly despairs of her daughter ever settling down and living a ‘normal’ life, but her mother’s love and fondness for her daughter also shines through - especially given her crusty old step-father’s pig headedness.

Filling her time with laboratory work and being the lone woman at science meetings, Ursula has few friends apart from the older (and married) Professor Smee, who is besotted with her but whose ardour she does not even notice. But the more her scientific experiments get noticed by the academy, the more Ursula’s star rises and even when she meets the dashing Tony Balestier with whom she falls in love, her devotion to her science cannot be dampened. That is… until she falls in with the militant suffragettes.

Swinging from being a strident opposer to the women’s movement to a committed leader, Ursula is soon prioritising votes for women over everything else. Including Tony…

I will give no more away about the narrative of The Call, except to say that the call of the title can be interpreted in a number of ways: Ursula’s scientific work, her devotion to women’s suffrage, her commitment to Tony, her objection to the violence of war, or her determination to invent a means of extinguishing the ‘liquid fire’ that the Germans are using during the war.

This is a thoroughly compelling book, starting in 1909 and enduring until 1918. Edith writes in an accessible and enjoyable way, and even the potentially tedious ‘science parts’ are not alienating to a non-science type such as me (Edith’s own step-mother was the scientist Hertha Marks Ayrton, which should explain her insight into the subject). The descriptions of suffrage life are hectic and consuming, as that life no doubt was - my only minor grumble is that Ursula moves into this life so quickly and exits it equally fast. But the sections about her prison experiences, especially the vivid and scalding descriptions of being on hunger and thirst strikes, are painfully shocking and well worth reading: all too often, contemporary onlookers do not seem to grasp the physical and mental agony of days and weeks on a hunger and thirst strike and how crippling this is to the person… and that is before even considering the torture of forcible feeding. Along with the description of the same experiences in Sylvia Pankhurst’s own writings, Ursula’s experiences in The Call are truly shocking. As they should be.

Re-publishing The Call is a credit to Persephone and this is exactly the kind of book that I hope they continue putting out. Suffrage novels written at the time are hard to come by (though I’ve recently read both Restored by Emily Spender and Mildred’s Career by Miss Ramsay, both of which were written in the 1870s about the pre-militant campaign, and Mildred’s Career in particular is perfect for a Persephone reprint - hint hint! You can read my review of it on the hyperlink).

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On a personal note, completing The Call feels like a triumph. Following a bereavement seven weeks ago that left me devastated, my ability to read anything beyond a few lines here and there in a trashy magazine has been hopeless. Knowing what hot-water-bottle tomes Persephone Books can be, I was determined to push on with The Call. Everything about it seemed like it should be a tonic to me: woman writer, suffrage theme, defiance of social mores, page-turning plot. But with my mind in pieces and my concentration shot, I struggled. But I’m glad I pushed on, because the story has been totally engrossing and completing it has been a huge satisfaction. Onwards women writers.

Vote 100 - A Round-Up of Some of the Events

This has been an exciting year for suffrage themed exhibitions, owing to it being the centenary of when (some) women finally got the vote here in the UK. Of the (approximately) ten million suffrage events all over the country, I barely made it to a handful. Here are a few of my highlights, and do share in the comments about any favourite or memorable events that you attended.

One of the two enormous suffragette lanterns at the Bristol parade

Marking exactly 100 years since the Representation of the People Act 1918 (and my 40th birthday!), Bristol Women’s Voice organised a beautiful lantern parade in the evening on February 6. Literally thousands of women, girls and menfolk attended, many were dressed up, and almost everyone had a handmade torch-lit lantern as we marched and paraded from Clifton down to College Green. Despite the cold, rain and sleet, it was a truly magnificent event.

Sappho to Suffrage in Oxford

Sappho to Suffrage: Women Who Dared is a free exhibition at the Bodleian Library in Oxford and is a carefully curated selection from the extension collection that showcased some of the more notable pieces relating to women. Not exclusively suffrage related, the exhibition includes everything from Mary Wollstonecraft’s original notebook showing her working draft of Frankenstein, to a fabric banner from the Oxford Women’s Suffrage Society that had been used in suffrage parades a century before. This exhibition remains open until 19 February 2019, so you still have time to go.

Index of Suffragettes at the National Archives

On May 18, I went to a special evening event at the National Archives in Kew called Law Makers or Law Breakers? Alongside animated talks from Dr Naomi Paxton and actor Jessica Hynes (writer and star of suffrage sitcom Up The Women), it was a chance to see the brand new exhibition Suffragettes vs The State, drink at the Women’s Gin-stitute and drinks suffrage-themed cocktails. 

Millicent Fawcett at the LSE

Over at the London School of Economics, there was the exhibition At Last! Votes for Women, which took the refreshing approach of giving equal billing to all three of the major suffrage groups: not prioritising the Women’s Social and Political Union as so many exhibitions and events did. So we saw equal information and memorabilia about the Women’s Freedom League and the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Socieities as well as the WSPU. My favourite item was the menu from the final dinner held by the vegetarian and teetotal NUWSS to celebrate winning the vote on equal terms as men in 1928: lentil cutlets in tomato sauce with Italian eggs, anyone?

Dr Naomi Paxton with our balloon suffragist Winifred

Elsewhere in London, the Barbican hosted a series of film screenings and events under the banner of Nevertheless, She Persisted. I attended a screening of the 1913 silent movie The Suffragette (about a convert to the women’s movement who develops a delightfully arsonistic streak, while sporting an impressively mammoth hat), starring Asta Nielson and introduced by Dr Naomi Paxton. A wonderful chance to see a feature length movie that was new to me, as well as another chance to watch a selection of the short films from the BFI’s Make More Noise collection (this gets wheeled out fairly regularly all over the place, and is also on DVD, if you haven’t yet seen this).

Votes For Women sweeties

The Museum of London holds one of the biggest collections of suffrage pieces anywhere in the world, and has a sizeable suffragette display as part of its permanent display. So I had high hopes for its Vote 100 exhibition, which were dashed pretty quickly. This tiny exhibition featured a literal handful of objects in a few glass cases, displayed in a dark room that was also showing on loop a short ‘talking heads’ film with suffrage writers. When I asked an usher if this was it or was there more elsewhere, it turned out I wasn’t the only one to think this exhibition  a phenomenal let down. But if you want to see it for yourself, it remains open - and free to attend - until 10 March 2019.

The Cause from Dreadnought South West

The Cause was a brand new touring play from Dreadnought South West, about an imagined conversation between suffrage leaders Millicent Fawcett and Emmeline Pankhurst. I caught the play when it came to the Redgrave Theatre in Bristol in the summer, and was swept up in the tide of revolution stirring through Natalie McGrath’s tight script.

Up at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, I felt truly lucky to catch a performance of the outstanding and mesmerising one-woman play That Daring Australian Girl, about real-life Australian suffragette Muriel Matters who came to London and caused no end of mayhem in the name of votes for women. Her story was brilliantly told by actor Joanne Hartstone (who also wrote the script), who had come over from Australia to tour the show. It deservedly won five-star reviews all across the board.

Also causing a fuss in theatres was the hip hop musical at the Old Vic in London about Sylvia Pankhurst, called simply Sylvia, that enjoyed colour-blind casting and took a few liberties to achieve a rip roaring historical feast. Written by the exciting duo of Kate Prince and Priya Parmar, and with Beverley Knight as Emmeline Pankhurst, Sylvia had audiences dancing in the aisles. Let’s hope this sold out show returns.

Suffraducks at the Houses of Parliament

The Houses of Parliament naturally needed to get in on the act and did so with its Voice & Vote: Women’s Place in Parliament exhibition in its echoey grand hall. Recreating various key parliamentary places in the votes for women story, visitors were able to experience The Ventilator (the cramped loft space above the House of Common Chamber where women could try to watch proceedings), The Cage (an enclosed space where, hidden behind large brass grilles, women could try to find out what was going on) and The Tomb (the tiny little Ladies’ Members Room where the very first female MPs were expected to conduct their business). The suffragette bath ducks in the gift shop were a particular highlight and you can still buy them online. Unable to make it to the (now closed) exhibition? Fret not. You can watch a video tour of it on this Facebook link.