Picture: Pamela Raith Photography
Fantastically Great Women Who Changed the World continues at Theatre Royal Stratford East, London until 17 July 2022. The show then visits the Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury (26-20 July) and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe (4-29 August).
Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩
It’s inspiring, upbeat and affirmative. And it has a clear aim of showing girls and young women that they too can change the world.
Based on the book by Kate Pankhurst, Chris Bush’s stage adaptation gives us Jade (Kudzai Mangombe), an 11 year old lost in a museum which has a gallery of greatness where she meets Amelia Earhart, Jane Austen, Frida Kahlo and many more.
Mangombe, playing over ten years younger than her age, is totally convincing. She is upset because nobody notices her, has low expectations of her own potential and is distressed by the break up of her parents’ marriage. It’s a lovely performance as she gradually becomes more positive.
The women who wander into the gallery gradually convince her that every one of us changes the world simply by being in it although making a real difference is rarely straightforward.
It feel like the musical Six has been an influence (two of the cast of five are former “Queens”). Characters wear radiantly irreverent costumes and there are lots of flashing lights and neon signs (design by Joanna Scotcher).
The songs in various styles (lyrics by Bush and Miranda Cooper, music by Cooper and Jennifer Decilveo) are delivered with passion, energy, lively dancing and – most importantly in a show like this – impeccable diction so that children in the audience really do learn who these women are and what they’re remembered for.
Especially memorable is the number by three Marys: Seacole, Anning and Curie. Renée Lamb is lovely as Mary Seacole, miffed because her work wasn’t recognised or valued at the time of the Crimea when she founded a hospital.
Christina Modestou has fun with a Dorset voice as Anning and the discovery of the fossils (for which she got no credit) is hilarious.
Marie Curie (Jade Kennedy – very French), who discovered two elements and pioneered radiography, became the first women ever to receive a Nobel Prize because her husband Pierre insisted that the award be a joint one.
The show is often moving. Rosa Parks (Lamb) – wise and kind – sitting next to Kennedy on a bench singing a lyrical song of great beauty is quite a moment. So is the arrival of Anne Frank.
The five cast members work slickly and smoothly together. There are a lot of roles in this 80-minute, one-act show and many quick dives on and off to reappear as someone else with the necessary costume change.
An all-female three piece band (led by MD Audra Cramer on keys) does a fine job – lots of fearsomely rhythmic percussion work – on three platforms upstage above the action.
Fantastically Great Women Who Changed the World, directed by Amy Hodge, is billed as a family show suitable for audiences aged 7-plus and it’s perfectly pitched for that.
Susan Elkin
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