THOMAS MIDDLETON’S WOMEN BEWARE WOMEN at Golden Goose Theatre 11 - 15 March 2025

‘this young company gives object lessons to Hollywood royalty in how to speak verse’ ★★★★

Jacobethan Revenge Dramas are a very odd set of plays. There will be a predictable set of circumstances. There will be infidelity and intrigue, and sometimes incest to raise the stakes. Everyone will betray everyone else, and there will almost certainly be a pile of corpses on the stage at the end of the evening. All this told in some of the most high-flown, beautifully crafted language the English stage has ever known. Women Beware Women is a fine example of the genre. 

Contemporary performances often try to make these plays ‘relevant’, rework them so that the blood bolstered dynamic becomes meaningful, tackles a contemporary social dilemma, does something to bring them into line with current mores. Mya Grace Kelln and her Thirteenth Night Theatre Company have no truck with this. The play is presented as written, the verse is given full value, and the motivation and character arcs of the characters are just as opaque and bloody as Thomas Middleton made them in 1625. 

A black stage draped in white fabric, lights set to icy blue or stark white, the company dressed in white – it is stylised and stylish, and when Amelia Pike’s Livia seduces Ewan Bruce’s Leantio, she opens her blouse to reveal scarlet underwear, and the flash of colour is startling, erotic, and alarming. The production is full of delicate, effective moments like that, and a young company gives object lessons to Hollywood royalty in how to speak verse, letting the rhythm sing but still owning it as a way of speaking, not orating. 

One or two of the cast are a touch quiet, even in the intimate playing space, but the important character beats – the turn-arounds from Lani Blossom Perry’s Bianca and Maria Potter’s Isabella, the moral degradation of everyone, the dissolute sneers of Fabritio and Hippolito (Joseph Devitt and Alec Watson) – are elegantly managed. 



An accomplished and intelligent production of one of the seventeenth centuries wackier plays, a convincing introduction to a Shakespearean playwright who wasn’t Shakespeare, and a teetering stack of bodies decorating the space when the lights go down. This is a very accomplished show by a very good company. 

THOMAS MIDDLETON’S WOMEN BEWARE WOMEN at Golden Goose Theatre 11 – 15 March 2025

Presented by 13th Night Theatre Company

Box Office https://www.goldengoosetheatre.co.uk/whatson/women-beware-women 

Joining the cast are previous 13th Night Theatre Company members Eliza Cameron as The Mother, Charlotte Clements as Sordido/Cardinal, Natasha Mula as Guardiana, Lani Blossom Perry as Bianca, and Amelia Pike as Livia, plus newcomers Ewan Bruce as Leantio, Oscar Chandler as The Duke, Joseph Devitt as Fabritio, Sean Farrell as The Ward, Maria Potter as Isabella, and Alec Watson as Hippolito. With direction from Kelln, with Movement and Intimacy Direction from Isabella Garland.