1609. I AM EMILIA.
WRITER. WIFE. LOVER. MOTHER. MUSE.
400 years ago Emilia Bassano wanted her voice to be heard. It wasn’t. Could she have been the “Dark Lady” of Shakespeare’s sonnets? What of her own poems? Why was her story erased from history?
Emilia and her sisters reach out to us across the centuries with passion, fury, laughter and song. Listen to them. Let them inspire and unite us.
Celebrate women’s voices through the story of this trailblazing, forgotten woman. Stand up and be counted.
2019. WE ARE EMILIA.
Review: Emilia the Play – Vaudeville Theatre, London
When was the last time you saw a show where you felt entirely compelled to stand up at the end and cheer? For me, I don’t stand up very often. For me to give a show a standing ovation, it needs to be incredible.
So when Emilia ended and I jumped straight to my feet to applaud the incredible final monologue, I knew that this was an incredible show.
But let’s back up a bit.
Emilia the Play transferred from The Globe to London West End’s Vaudeville Theatre, and sadly ends its run on June 1st, 2019. The play, written by Morgan Lloyd Malcolm, gives us a glimpse into the life of the seventeenth-century poet Emilia Bassano Lanier, who was allegedly one of Shakespeare’s muses.
The unique thing about this show is that it’s entirely the effort of women. The cast, crew, and band are all women, which makes the massively feminist context of the show even more powerful. Every woman has a presence on the stage, and what makes it even greater is the vast diversity of the cast, including several disabled actors (who are cast purely because they’re incredible actors, and not because their disabilities have any bearing on the plot).
There are three women (Saffron Coomber, Adelle Leonce and Clare Perkins) who portray Emilia at different points in her life, and all three actresses are just amazing to watch. They each give their own unique performances that are emotional and powerful, and I hung on to every word they said. There’s also Charity Wakefield, who plays the silly but charismatic William Shakespeare, and I completely fell in love with her. (I pretty much fell in love with the entire cast.)
Every line of dialogue is important, and not a single part of the show feels out of place of unneeded. It’s so cleverly constructed, and I can’t remember the last time I saw a show where I loved the writing so much that I want to buy the fulls script so I can read it and annotate it to death.
The story explores feminism, the power than men have over women, especially in this time period, and how men’s talents often massively overshadow those of women who were only there to marry men and not to explore their passions.
Although it’s all written within the context of the time period, it’s still scarily accurate today. The powerful themes and the roof-raising monologues are enough to bring tears to people’s eyes, and the final monologue (which moves swiftly into a big dance party onstage) brings the entire house to their feet.
Emilia is silly, it’s fun, and it’s completely unsubtle, but the most important word I can think of to describe this show is powerful. It’s about the importance of friendship, strength in numbers, and the power of female ingenuity.
It shows the power that women have when they work together to bring down the patriarchy. It encourages the women in the audience to see the power within themselves, and it tells them to be unafraid to explore their passions and carve a path for themselves in a world that’s still overshadowed by masculinity.
As Emilia states in her final emotionally-charged, incredibly empowering monologue that has everyone jumping to their feet: “If they try to burn you, may your fire be stronger than theirs so you can burn the whole f*cking house down.”
Emilia runs until June 1st at the Vaudeville Theatre, London. Click here to find out more and to book tickets.
