"I AM EMILIA.
Writer. Wife. Lover. Mother. Muse.
I am unheard.
I want education, equality, opportunity, respect. For us all.
We want choice.
We want a voice."
- Emilia Bassano, 1609
After showing at the Globe in 2017, Morgan Lloyd Malcolm's play Emilia opened on the West End in March 2019 to roaring praise. Every girl with #feminist in her Instagram bio has seen this play and has recommended it to you. And for the most part, you should listen to them.
Emilia, inspired by the true life of Emilia Bassano Lanier, is the fictional story about a modern woman confined in a traditional, sexist world. Set in the seventeenth century, young Emilia was sold into a finishing school and groomed into the etiquette of the times. The name of the game, find a rich husband. Anything that may make her undesirable, such as being "high minded", was squashed in favour of learning Court-approved dancing. Which, we have to admit, is very important.
Emilia is also the only black women present in court (at least in the play, I haven't googled to see if that's true in real life). This is seen as a "positive" trait and results in her receiving a lot of older male attention from a young age. Emilia claims later that men find her "exotic" or "unusual" or "something new to try". Gross.
The over-arching messages suit the current zeitgeist of social conversation. The production team also walked the walked when it comes to female empowerment. For one, both the male and female roles were performed by female actors. This is used to comic effect, with every man performed as an over-the-top Monty-Python-esque buffoon. Secondly, the cast included actors with visible disabilities: the first show I've seen to provide disabled actors with a stage on the West End.
But, an overwhelming criticism of Emilia is its over-reliance on the current zeitgeist. The entire first act feels like it features in an Urban Outfitters pop-up book of #feminism. The observations were too relevant and the jokes seemed like they were taken from last weeks Twitter thread. Despite the humour, Six-like modernity and trendy point of view, I felt placated and almost insulted by the end of the first act. It felt uncomfortable and offensive to use this real person to reiterate popular Buzzfeed articles.
Yet, that all changed in the second act. The tone chilled, the colour palette in the theatre design dulled, and a new story had begun. It became less about #feminism and decided to highlight the very real danger Emilia Bassano was in by trying to publish her poetry. Malcolm refocuses the play at this point away from Deadpoolian fourth wall breaks and highlights why these messages were, and are, so important for women to hear. We see Emilia be accused of being a witch, an accusation that still carries the death penalty by burning. We see other women, generally in the working class, sacrifice huge proportions of their earnings to help spread Emilia's message of equality. We also see them suffer in doing so. We, as the audience, are reminded that women were completely at the mercy of the men for shelter and safety. And that men revoked those privileges as and when they saw fit. It was hard to stomach. These women were second class citizens, and the tonal shift was the perfect way to expose that inequality.
Claire Perkins monologue is worthy of particular mention. Both Perkins and Malcolm seem to really understand Emilia's point of view and why it is so important to tell her story in 2019. Perkins' delivery infused the theatre with the kind of stripped back passion that was both awe-inspiring and a little frightening. She gave me the show I needed to see.
In short, Emilia is two plays intelligently weaved together and neither would be as effective without the other. Despite leaving a bad taste in my mouth, the first half could be studied as an example of the medias point of view during the #MeToo era. It was cynical, light-hearted and deceptively irreverent. The second act, on the other hand, gave us a small insight into what people sacrificed in order for some women to have the privileges they currently have.
The audience gave Emilia a standing ovation, myself included, before buying the script in the reception on the way out. You should watch it.
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