'1536' review — history is brought bang up to date in this scorching female drama

Read our review of 1536, starring Siena Kelly, Liv Hill and Tanya Reynolds, now in performances at the Ambassadors Theatre to 1 August.

Summary

• Ava Pickett's acclaimed play 1536 comes to the West End
• The story centres on young women living in Tudor England
• Siena Kelly as reckless Anna and Tanya Reynolds as wry Mariella are both superb
• The galvanising show draws potent parallels with our modern world

Ava Pickett’s blazing debut play 1536, which audiences first encountered at the Almeida last year, gets a thoroughly well-deserved West End run. A historical drama set during the year in which Henry VIII had his wife Anne Boleyn executed, it is decidedly modern in its outlook, colloquial speech, and, most potently, impact.

The story centres on a trio of young women: brash, beautiful Anna (Siena Kelly), who we first meet having passionate sex up against a tree; wry midwife Mariella (Tanya Reynolds); and earnest, anxious Jane (Liv Hill). Initially it’s a warm, smartly observed, earthily funny (there is rigorously deployed swearing) portrait of complex female friendships – somehow both supportive and competitive, affectionate and needling. It almost strays into a Tudor Mean Girls.

But Pickett’s well-constructed piece soon grows richer and darker. As news travels to this isolated Essex village from London, the girls learn that the Queen has been imprisoned and accused of treason. Soon nasty rumours are circulating about her supposed infidelities, even an incestuous one; the men of their town start saying that she got what she deserved. With the King as the ultimate toxic masculinity role model – a 16th-century Andrew Tate – those men are emboldened to treat women with vile and violent impunity.

Each girl has her own journey within this dawning horror of the patriarchy unleashed. Kelly vividly embodies Anna’s recklessness, partly born out of passion, partly from the grim knowledge that she is trapped in this small rural community with no prospects. The more desperate she feels, the more she fights. But her true refuge is in dreaming of another life; the reality is unbearable.

Compelling too is Hill as plaintive good-girl Jane, who learns the hard lesson that obeying the rules of this restrictive society – even if it means betraying her sisterhood – won’t necessarily be her salvation. Reynolds brings aching pathos to world-weary Mariella, whose heart was broken by a wealthy beau, as well as a perfectly dry comic delivery.

The two male characters, though very much in support, are also well drawn. Oliver Johnstone is queasily good as Anna’s increasingly possessive and menacing lover, while George Kemp summons Mariella’s feckless posho ex. The rest of their community is well evoked too, building a world that defines and traps these powerless girls. Throughout Pickett mixes anachronistic, accessible language with period touches, such as the characters confidently asserting that putting a dead fish on your chest will cure fever.

Although we are always in the same location – a marshy field with towering grasses, brilliantly conjured by designer Max Jones – Lyndsey Turner’s production creates dynamism and variation through Jack Knowles’s expressive lighting, at one point summoning a threatening firestorm. The environment matches the changing mood: from a sleepy, stifling heatwave to spine-chilling, eerie night.

The play is overwritten in places, spelling out connections we’ve already made, and the climax strays into soap territory. But this is a gut-churning piece which shows how, almost 500 years on, we are still grappling with many of the same issues: gendered hypocrisy, slut-shaming, the corrosive danger of misinformation and mob mentality. “Will it always be like this?” asks Anna. That’s a question for audiences to ponder long after emerging from this original and galvanising show.

1536 is at the Ambassadors Theatre to 1 August. Book 1536 tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

Photo credit: 1536 (Photos by Helen Murray)