Maureen Lennon’s latest collaboration with Hull Truck is a paean to early feminist thinker Mary Wollstonecraft, the author of the Vindication of the Rights of Woman among many others. Owing a debt to the likes of Six and Emilia, this is an all-female ensemble piece with pop songs punctuating the action, which seeks to draw parallels between the eighteenth century and the current moment.
Starting towards the very end of her life, as Wollstonecraft gives birth to her second daughter, the story then jumps backwards in time to take us through a large number of biographical snippets, sketching a picture of the great thinker’s life, work and relations.
Wollstonecraft (Laura Elsworthy) is surrounded by five women, the ‘hyenas’ of the title, who act as a chorus and embody the characters in her orbit. They crawl up and over Sara Perks’s impressive wood-hued set, a tall, shallow collection of climbable box shapes which add variety of level to the staging.
This ensemble is a strong bunch, with each of them—Beth Crame, Kate Hampson, Kat Johns-Burke, Ainy Medina and Elexi Walker—given moments to shine in comic roles. They sing well together, though often these songs are hampered by a flat sound mix and heavy use of unison in the songwriting (by musician Billy Nomates). When their voices launch into harmony, or in moments of solo, they have more resonance.
One problem with the historical mystery tour approach to telling the story is that most characters are only ever sketched at best, and most ideas and relationships only get the most surface of tellings. When Fanny Blood appears, she informs us that she is "the love of her life, ready to join the sisterhood", and we immediately see Wollstonecraft turn shy, the closest she gets to tongue-tied. But we only get a couple of scanty scenes to see this relationship build in any way, and for all Lennon’s concision and skill with dialogue, it is not as satisfying to be told that people are deeply in love as to see that love grow through the onstage action.
As mentioned, the music is at times catchy but hampered throughout by a lack of dynamics. The backing tracks have a bedroom demo quality to them which doesn’t match the energy of the ideas. There’s only one song where a simple live instrumentation (played well by Kat Johns-Burke) joins forces with the women’s voices to provide a more immediate and thrilling experience. More of this, and less of the pre-records, would have been welcome.
The second half kicks off with one of the better songs, “We Are The Men”, laced through with humour and punch, and the scene that ensues is also more satisfying. We get to hear Mary actually putting forward, and standing up for, her arguments, as she goes toe to toe with the likes of William Godwin and Thomas Paine. It’s still a fairly compact scene, but it feels as though ideas are given more space to breathe and develop. Here, in the cut and thrust of debate, Lennon’s dialogue takes off.
Laura Elsworthy in the central role brings a lot of that punchiness to the performance, and she’s compelling throughout. Whether bent on all fours in the throes of childbirth, fervently standing up for the ideas she believed in—indeed, originated—or caring for her mother and daughters, Wollstonecraft in Elsworthy’s incarnation is captivating, human and fiercely intelligent.
Esther Richardson’s direction varies the stage space well and cuts to the heart of these brief glimpses of Wollstonecraft’s life and work. But ultimately, while this is a likeable piece which certainly doesn’t drag, there’s a feeling that true greatness is just out of reach: unlike the other musical history plays in whose shadow this unavoidably treads, there’s no real punch-the-air moment.