Modest is a show that is anything but, as it explores the life of a mostly forgotten Victorian female artist through the medium of drag kings, non-binary, queer and trans actors.
Elizabeth Thompson was trailblazing at a time when women were fighting for the right to be heard on many levels. Her painting Roll Call depicting a line of wounded and exhausted soldiers on the Crimean battlefield was accepted into the Royal Academy’s summer exhibition and caused such a sensation that the police were called in to control the crowds wishing to see it. And Queen Victoria purchased it. Yet when it came to being accepted into the RA she lost by two votes. This was 1879 and it would be 1922 before a woman finally made the grade.
Writer Ellen Brammar, working with queer-led theatre company Milk Presents and Hull-based Middle Child, has created a show that is a cross between a cabaret-style musical, a drag act and a straight historical play. It’s a layered mixture that sometimes sits uneasily together, but at its heart is a serious attempt to spotlight a woman who did start to break down barriers in the art world as others were doing the same in academia and medicine, and whose story deserves to be told.
The performers are all excellent and work brilliantly as a team centred around Emer Dineen, who plays Elizabeth with a brash sensuality that no Victorian woman would have ever recognised. Dressed in an off-the-shoulder red dress, she struts and cavorts her way through the male prejudices and sensibilities of the time. Drag kings including L J Parkinson (LoUis CYfer) and Isabel Adomakoh Young (Izzy Aman) play the academians as a basic send-up of men at the time. Jacqui Bardelang (Sigi Moonlight) is excellent at Millais and Fizz Sinclair excels as Elizabeth’s sister Alice, herself a noted essayist and poet.
There some serious moments—some of the scenes between the sisters are very moving—but most of the show is a full-on cabaret drag act—some of it extremely sexualised so be warned.
This production is fast-paced, funny and full of quality acting and singing as we follow Elizabeth’s ups and downs in her fight to be accepted as a serious artist while recognising her flaws as a person. After all—in spite of the way she is portrayed on stage—she was in fact a woman of her time.
If you like your history straight as it comes, this isn’t for you, but if you are a fan of musicals like Six and Hamilton or you just like something a bit different and ‘fringe’, then it well might be.