The Divine Mrs S @ Hampstead Theatre, London
Following the fame and cultural significance of Sarah Siddons, actress, sadly mostly through her personal life. Her Hamlet is reduced to flirting, with some fantastic sword-play. However, Rachel Stirling as Mrs S is divine, and Anushka Chakravarti is wonderful as her stage-struck maid.
April De Angelis’s play is entertaining, but the wider themes of women’s position in society, an abused wife, Mrs S’s brother’s bad behaviour are thrown in and thrown out again, never fully explored. The abused wife who turns up at the theatre inspired by Siddons performance expecting her to guide her like a prophet to freedom and a better land — only to find out that this is indeed an act — was really clunkily embedded and never deeply discussed. It felt like part-Clarissa and part-19th-century melodrama rather than a real woman enduring an impossible situation and an utterly unfair socio-economic position. The fact that this woman ran away and became a highway ‘man’ says it all — it’s theatrical! Somewhere under it all there could have been a much more serious play about a woman wanting a career — in a time when elite women just didn’t have such things or control over their own money, freedom of movement, children or bodies.
More tension could have been added if Siddons had encountered other actresses and acted more. We needed to see her Hamlet! It would have also been interesting to see her encounter some real women navigating the society of the day. I’m not sure about the plot which is casually introduced and then dropped of John Kemble’s (Dominic Rowan) lechery — apart from Anushka Chakravarti’s Patti becoming a comic character, utterly padded with clothes to avoid this situation again. His behaviour also felt completely out of character for someone so full of his own prestige and noblesse, and lacked truth. I didn’t feel that he would do this, in all honesty. The lack of follow-up was also odd, given that Patti and John Kemble continued to work alongside each other. This moment seemed like a cheap Me Too nod rather than the danger and trauma of being a working class woman in another’s employment, or how female servants were mistreated.
Apart from this aside, Dominic Rowan’s Kemble was fantastic as a very hammy, very declaiming actor — contrasted with his naturalistic, thoughtfully acting sister — and rocking a wonderful waistcoat. Their professional rivalry could have been developed more; tension is hinted at in the brother’s focus on ticket sales and his dealings with Mr S, often involving purloining his sister’s earnings or making her do the parts he wanted her to do at the expense of her own wishes and career.
The sub-plot of a female playwright was intriguing — but the power of female thinking and literacy fell by the way side. Joanna Baillie (Eva Feiler), author of De Montfort, wasn’t wanted as a woman writer in the theatre — although Mrs S wanted her scripts (and continued to give private readings of the same!) Though here she does provide a comic foil as a very intense and focused creative!
Set off-stage in the theatre, we encounter Mrs S’s elegant dressing room and sofa, with a constant stream of visitors; see the performances from behind the curtain at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane and join rehearsals. Every so often, proceedings are brought to a halt by the Lord Chamberlain’s wife — who (though apparently disapproving moralist) is really more than a fan… 18th- century costumes are suggested rather than realised — mostly the women look like they’re in their underwear! (Though Patti has a great line in caps and Mrs S does don a terrific sack-back gown). Joanna Bailie has very ‘80’s hair indeed, which is alarming — perhaps she is a time traveller.
Whilst very amusing with great performances and well-written in terms of jokes and research, yomping along like a Fielding or Sterne, we don’t experience here what made Siddons a great actress and such a cultural force to be reckoned with. We do see her battles with her brother, with her money-sponging husband who has taken a mistress and a new household elsewhere, her social struggle to be the exemplary mother, charm the critics and endure hate mail, heckling and audience condemnation, her grief at the loss of her children early in life and carrying on carrying on, even after experiencing loss. We also encounter her dreams and ambitions, which are often concealed underneath a polite veneer of wife and mother first. I wish also that class had been explored more here — how did Siddons elevate herself socially to such a a degree that a disreputable trade became respectable and revered, how did she manage to have it all? Rachel Stirling gave a wonderful performance — but I’m not sure that we ever got to meet Siddons in her fullness, due to the script. I did enjoy the asides — as Siddons commented as a narrator in a play — on her own life. Go just for Siddons commanding the interval to commence!
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