Theatre review: The Prince

In addition to the usual pre-show information most theatres send to audiences a couple of days before the show, the email from Southwark Playhouse about Abigail Thorn's The Prince also comes with an added warning that tickets will be checked multiple times, and audience members must not attempt to interact with the cast after the performance. It's depressingly easy to guess what this might be all about, and indeed the cast list confirms that, with a number of trans and non-binary cast members and a corresponding theme in the play itself, there's extra security because of threats from terven. Two trans women also find themselves in danger in the story itself, but the violence is both more immediate, and more surreal, as Sam (Joni Ayton-Kent) and Jen (Mary Malone) materialise on a battlefield at the start of Shakespeare's Henry IV Part 1.

The conceit is that they're trapped in a Shakespearean multiverse, travelling between the plays and sometimes taking on roles. Jen is a recent arrival who's spent some time playing Portia in Julius Caesar, but Sam has been there a lot longer and, thanks to a magical version of Google she's stolen from Prospero, knows that the exit back to the real world is at the end of this play.

As such she's desperate to let the story run its course so that the portal can open at the moment of Hotspur's death, but she finds resistance from Jen, who empathises with a number of the characters. Predominantly Hotspur (Thorn,) who she starts to suspect is a trans woman who doesn't realise it (or, of course, have any conception of what that is,) and feels trapped by the play's hyper-masculine pitting of the two Harries against each other. Prince Hal himself (Corey Montague-Sholay) turns out to be a fashion-forward gay man, while Hotspur's wife Lady Kate (Tianna Arnold) is very accomplished for a woman of her time, but has to hide her light under a bushel in her alloted position as loyal spouse.

Jen's interference means the characters, hardwired into their roles, have moments where they start to realise they're in a play (Thorn offers Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Deadnamed as an alternative title.) They become vaguely aware of the audience, of the fact that they don't appear to have any lives between scenes, and even that the same actor (Ché Walker) is doubling the roles of Henry IV and Northumberland. Natasha Rickman's production is strongest in the frantic and surreal comedy of two modern women trapped in a fictional past, and of the characters from that story confusedly letting the outside world in as well.

The entertainment factor and likeable cast help paper over some of the cracks, especially in the first act: The idea of a Shakespearean multiverse is a genius one, and I'm sure some day someone will revisit it properly, but it's not really what's being explored here as we're (mostly) in the one play. Some of the plot holes can be handwaved by the general sense of silliness (there's not even an attempt to provide a MacGuffin for how Sam and Jen got there, and in the end it's just accepted that people falling into literature is a random thing that happens all the time,) but given the idea that the two could end trapped playing supporting roles forever, I would have liked some question over whether that's also how the leads ended up there in the first place.

The play's more serious musings, of characters trapped in a pre-written script as a metaphor for being trans and in the closet, don't always land as well: Thorn's Shakespearean pastiche is good, but the production flags in scenes where there's too much of it, which happens more in the second act (which also opens with a diversion into Hamlet, mainly so that the most famous soliloquy can be repurposed.) Without the distraction of the comic shenanigans a lot of the inconsistencies in plot and what the play's trying to say are also a bit more starkly visible. The comedy is the real selling point of the evening, and in fact could be quite revolutionary in itself: Even if you took out the more philosohpical musings, there's something refreshingly inclusive about a diverse audience laughing at the misadventures and jokes about pronouns of a comedic pair who just happen to be trans women.

The Prince by Abigail Thorn is booking until the 8th of October at Southwark Playhouse's Large Theatre.

Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Mark Senior.