ajhlovestheatre

MODEST

by Ellen Brammar

Directed by Luke Skilbeck and Paul Smith

Kiln Theatre London – until 15 July 2023

https://kilntheatre.com/whats-on/modest/

Deliberately jarring in tone as it smashes together a plethora of performance styles and theatrical genres, Ellen Brammar’s new piece is a compelling demonstration that it’s possible to create a show that is simultaneously very angry while giving its audience a rollicking good time. With a contemporary music score by Rachel Barnes, Modest is a sort of queer pantomime infused with agitprop, peppered with anachronisms, using the story of painter Elizabeth Thompson, later Lady Butler, who in 1879 came within two votes of being the first woman elected into the Royal Academy, to examine male dominance and privilege, while employing drag king fabulousness, snarling attitude and rambunctious humour as its weapons of choice.

Not everybody will buy into the baroque extravagance of the script and of Luke Skilbeck and Paul Smith’s staging, which combines songs, lip synch routines and elements of stand-up comedy, but is surprisingly strong on historical detail and dramatic tension, though short on subtlety and formulaic discipline. If the tidal wave of rainbow-coloured joy and indignation doesn’t sweep you along, you may feel rather as though you’re at a party to which you haven’t been invited, such is the roaring engagement of the majority of the audience. To the show’s immense credit, the more outrageous, frequently laugh-out-loud moments don’t obscure the fury and fire in its soul, or the really superb writing for Elizabeth and her sometimes antagonistic sister Alice (Meynell, the poet and suffragist, reimagined here as a trans woman, played with considerable sensitivity and brilliance by Fizz Sinclair).

Emer Dineen, a vision of statuesque shimmer in a hot pink ballgown, is a commanding, thrilling voiced Thompson, often hilarious and commendably not afraid to point up some of the character’s more obnoxious traits (fiercely ambitious, with a rock solid confidence in her own abilities and no particular interest in elevating other women at a time in history when it was most sorely needed: she’s not always easy to root for; the show’s title is ironic). Sinclair’s Alice is a far more sympathetic figure, as is Libra Teejay’s non-binary, teenage fan and would-be artist Bessie, whose admiration for Elizabeth is disillusioned and all but extinguished by her idol’s selfishness.

The script, for all it’s sparkle and originality (Teejay also doubles as a magnificently unconventional Queen Victoria, popping Skittles like they’re ecstasy tablets and in command of a human-sized S&M lapdog…the men of the Royal Academy are Black Adder-ish grotesques portrayed with real relish), becomes frustrating as it throws up interesting ideas but then doesn’t do anything much with them. One such is the vast inequality between Elizabeth and Bessie’s incomes which means that the former can explore an artistic life whereas the latter is forced to languish in obscurity and servitude, which is something that certainly speaks to prospective artists in the present day. Another is the brief championing of Thompson by established painter Millais (Jacqui Bardelang, excellent) which comes out of nowhere and then stops with the life-changing vote which saw the female artist just miss out on entry to the RA membership. Thompson’s marriage is given just a cursory mention and the “I feel like burning some shit / I have matches” finale feels a bit like Emilia-lite. Some of the songs are authentic bangers but a couple of them unhelpfully stop the show in its tracks, especially if Dineen isn’t singing.

The cast are a versatile, talented bunch, doubling and tripling roles to exhilarating comic effect. Isabel Adomakoh Young is a joy as a particularly dim man from the RA, and a naive painter who follows Thompson, and watching Sinclair switch from Alice to a wonderfully awful old codger (“most women’s brains, are too small for intellectual or creative pursuits”) is astonishing. At the performance I saw, Madeleine McMahon was reading in for an indisposed LJ Parkinson as the senior, and probably most ghastly, of the Royal Academy gatekeepers and the sweet painter Alice falls for, and did a jaw-droppingly fine job of nailing every laugh in both characters and finding nuances of vulnerability in the latter: really terrific work.

Visually, the show could benefit from a little more flamboyance and style in terms of set design and lighting, and the storytelling could be clearer at times. Still, this is an inventive, thought-provoking and refreshingly unconventional piece of music theatre with organic fire in its belly and a lot on its mind. It also made me go away and look at Elizabeth Thompson’s paintings. In a particularly striking moment in the show, Dineen “paints” on a stretched out canvas of almost see-through film using various colours, and a pair of boxing gloves in lieu of a brush. It’s a punchy (literally), memorable image that effectively encapsulates what Thompson, and Modest, tries to do.