In 1908, a woman of colour was a contestant for Beauty Queen in a competition held at the Kursaal in Southend. She called herself Princess Dinubolu of Senegal. So much is fact, widely reported at the time in the press in the UK and abroad, but was she a real princess and did she come from Senegal? It is a mystery that fuelled this fictional version of the princess’s story by writer and actress Anne Odeke.
Princess Essex first took the form of a monologue commissioned by and performed at The Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch. That has now been expanded to produce this full-length play. It is staged with vaudevillian vigour by director Robin Belfield and, though not quite a musical, is accompanied by Simon Slater’s lively score with songs from and in the style of the music hall.
Odeke’s princess (hers in two ways as both writer and actress) is a housemaid called Joanna whose mistress Mrs Bugle (Lizzie Hopley) takes her to the Kursaal to see The Great Batwa, a diminutive African being exhibited like a performing monkey. Joanna sets out to rescue Batwa from this racist exploitation, only to discover it's an act that gives Batwa advantage.
When Kursaal manager Mr Bacon, in cahoots with Mayor Ingram, comes up with the idea of a Beauty Pageant to compete with what rival Folkestone plans, boost Southend’s image and rescue the Kursaal from financial failure, Joanna sees impersonation as a ploy she can use, and Bacon goes along with her, making her the first black woman allowed to enter a beauty contest in Britain.
Though on one level this is a portrait of racism with added excursions touching on suffrage and lesbian attraction, this is more Carry On than classical. While most of the characters are comically caricatured, Anne Odeke as Joanna and Alison Halstead as Batwa are totally real when not in pretend mode. These are performances to relish.
Matthew Ashforde’s troubled Bacon also seems real (and he too puts on an act: dragging up to spy on Folkestone) while at the opposite extreme, John Cummins frisks around the stage as Edward VII, a laughable lecher identifying himself in song as “Flirty Bertie”. He is hilarious, but it goes on too long and is not the only diversion that stretches out the evening.
Hayley Grindle’s design and costumes with their Edwardian bathing suits, a half pierrot policeman and an ice-cream seller pedalling around the stage capture the feel of an old-time seaside postcard. Princess Essex is colourful and funny. It is an audience pleaser—and that is meant as a positive.