REVIEW: MARY’S DAUGHTERS at The Space Theatre 19 – 30 March

‘a very committed play, a play that is keenly aware of the importance of its subject’ ★★★

Mary Wollstonecraft was a pioneer feminist, the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women, and the mother of two daughters; Fanny Imlay, who was three years old when Mary died, and Mary Shelley, who lost her mum when she was 11 days old. Mary’s early demise deprived the girls of any chance to talk to her. Kaya Bucholc has written a play to address that lack. 



The substance of the play is a three-way conversation between mother and daughters, a run down on some of the feminist principals Mary introduces, and on some of the ways their lives were conditioned by the absence of those principals. There is a lot of conversation. There is a lot of exposition. There is not very much action, apart from some slow choreographed sequences that seemed a bit incongruous, but tried to give some variety to the talkiness.

It’s a very committed play, a very worthy play, a play that is keenly aware of the importance of its subject and the world’s comparative ignorance of that importance. It is also a play that wants to give the daughters a chance to say all the things they never got the chance to say, and air resentments, and come to terms with their personal histories.

All of those ideas are significant and important and worth spending time on, but they do make for a static, slow piece of drama. Mixing in Fanny’s suicide at the age of 22 and Mary Shelley’s authorship of Frankenstein, and a bit of startling modern idiom, go some way to enlivening proceedings but not far enough. The real problem is that neither daughter knew their mother well enough to engage with her ideas, so a play about the interplay of those ideas is entirely speculative, but the production is hidebound by respect for the life and works of the first Mary.

The set is made up of stretched lace, sometimes over frame screens that are translucent and allow silhouettes to shine through. The delicacy of the stage design cries out for a complementary lighting design to pick up on the patterning, to define playing areas, to affect mood, but that doesn’t happen, so the design becomes a backdrop without intruding much. When the three actors have identical drab costumes, albeit with differently coloured sashes, there is a sad lack of visual excitement as well as a lack of dynamic interest.

This is a play about an important topic. It is worthy and well-intentioned. It doesn’t do much to win over an audience not previously persuaded of Mary Wollstonecraft’s importance.

Photography credit: Billy Steel

MARY’S DAUGHTERS at The Space Theatre 19 – 30 March

Box Office https://space.org.uk/event/marys-daughters/

Cast:

Megan Carter as Mary Wollstonecraft

Kaya Bucholc as Fanny Imlay

Rachael Reshma as Mary Shelley

Creatives:

Directed by Kay Brattan

Assistant Direction by Billy Steel

Set Design by Marysia Bucholc

Produced by Billy Steel (BiLLO Studio) and Alice Greening (Little Lion Theatre)

Website: https://www.billo.studio/projects/marysdaughters

Reviewed by Chris Lilly