Theatre review: Emilia

Like most new Artistic Directors, Michelle Terry's had a mixed first season in charge of the Globe, but one area that for me has seemed an unqualified success has been her approach to gender parity in casting. Although she's stuck to her predecessor's target of 50/50 casting, Terry has amended this to be across an entire season rather than on a production-by-production basis, so directors of individual shows don't feel too restricted by it. One way to make sure a lot of classics dominated by men can be balanced out is by having one production cast entirely with women, and Morgan Lloyd Malcolm's specially-commissioned Emilia is no random choice to get this treatment: The story of a possible muse of Shakespeare's bubbles over with anger at the absence of women from Jacobethan theatre, so the way Nicole Charles's production flips the era's all-male casting doesn't feel like meeting a quota, but like an essential part of the play's reclaiming of women's voices.

Characters named Emilia have been a conscious part of the programming of Shakespeare plays this season (only The Comedy of Errors is missing from the full set,) because there is speculation that Emilia Bassano might have been the Dark Lady of Shakespeare's sonnets, and also have been memorialised by him in these characters.

Emilia does follow her relationship with William Shakespeare (Charity Wakefield) but is more concerned with taking her out of his shadow and presenting her own unique talents and achievements. Leah Harvey, Vinette Robinson and Clare Perkins play Emilia over the course of her life; having a role shared as a character ages isn't a new conceit but I liked the twist Lloyd Malcolm employs in the timing of switching actors. Instead of using it as a sign of time passing, the baton is passed at the moment of major or traumatic events in her life, a literal representation of the way she's left a version of herself behind but perhaps gained a new strength to move forwards with. (Although the past versions aren't completely abandoned, when one Emilia is centre-stage the other two serve as narrators.)

There's a lot going on in Emilia, with the first act largely concerned with Bassano's rise through the patronage of various men - she becomes the mistress of Lord Chamberlain Henry Carey (Carolyn Pickles,) and when she gets pregnant is married off to the obviously gay Alphonso (Amanda Wilkin,) an arrangement that ends up suiting them both more than they expected. It's through Carey that she meets Shakespeare, and though their relationship is largely played for laughs his ability to get his words heard - and perhaps take credit for some of hers as well - while her poetry is dismissed as a hobby begins to build a fire in her that dominates the second act. This is a long play, with the first act coming in at 90 minutes, and although entertaining and often very funny it did feel like it could have done with a few cuts.

Not so with the second act, which packs about as much content into an hour, and in focusing on Emilia's anger and spirit of rebellion really gets to the heart of the story. Here it's the other women in her life who come to the fore, like her mentor Lady Margaret (Sophie Stone,) whose daughter Lady Anne (Shiloh Coke) becomes in turn a protégé of Emilia's and hilariously outspoken. Nadia Albina's Lady Katherine becomes something of an antagonist in her adherence to the status quo and parroting of racist opinions the men in her life have taught her to hold, but she too will be swept up in Emilia's eventual act of defiance in teaching a group of London washerwomen (including a reliably entertaining Sophie Russell) to read and write, as well as finding a loophole for finally getting her own poetry out into the public eye.

Design hasn't been one of the more memorable features of this summer season so far but Jo Scotcher's come up with costumes that bring the characters to life and a set that almost literally embraces the groundlings in the way Emilia embraces all women who've come before and after her; and I liked the way the stage is dominated by a circular bookshelf making up the Globe's new "wooden O" logo in red books, tying the branding together in the way the play ties together the season's loose theme. With Perkins' barnstorming version of Emilia in charge by the end, this becomes not so much a call to arms as a validation of an existing fight that's long overdue, and if the play takes a bit too long to get there it's a moving climax worth the wait. If she was anything like Lloyd Malcolm imagines her the real Emilia Bassano would have been proud to see this female takeover of the Globe in her name, although the fact that it's taken this many centuries would probably have been a crushing blow.

Emilia by Morgan Lloyd Malcolm is booking in repertory until the 1st of September at Shakespeare's Globe.

Running time: 2 hours 55 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Helen Murray.