Emilia

Emilia Bassano lived from 1569-1645, daughter of an Italian court musician. She was a poet, mother, writer, teacher and a feminist, but that's about all the information we have. Equality still hasn't arrived almost four hundred years after her death, and women all over the world are still struggling to make our voices heard. The playwright Morgan Lloyd Malcolm has taken the few facts we know about Emilia and transformed her into a feminist icon. Now she's the symbol of all women, of the females who have been oppressed, shut up, ignored, shouted down and not allowed a voice for century after century.

Lloyd Malcolm paints a lively picture of Emilia, a woman who doesn't care about the silly courtship games played by her fellow aristocrats. She wants to write. But did the Bard ever meet Emilia, never mind freely borrow her ideas and words? As the one-time mistress of the Lord Chamberlain, she may have met Will Shakespeare. But that isn't the issue. The important thing is Emilia's role as a living symbol of exploited women. This is a very clever, very potent speculative history. It's angry, passionate, livid, furious. And the final blazing speech may as well be a call for rebellion, it's so dazzling. The all-female cast includes Leah Harvey, Vinette Robinson and Clare Perkins. Carolyn Pickles plays Lord Henry Carey, and Amanda Wilkin plays Emilia's husband, Alphonso. Altogether a remarkable play revealing a vital contemporary message.