Picture: Pamela Raith Photography
Fantastically Great Women Who Changed The World continues at the MAST Mayflower Studios, Southampton until 20 November 2021, and then on UK tour until 16 January 2022, with further tour dates for 2022 to be announced.
Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Fantastically Great Women Who Changed The World presents colourful portraits of 12 phenomenal women from history including Jane Austen, Amelia Earhart, Frida Kahlo, Rosa Parks and Anne Frank, as well as Emmeline Pankhurst, distant relative of Kate Pankhurst, whose eponymous Bloomsbury picture book is adapted for the stage by Chris Bush.
Boasting an all-female creative team spearheaded by Amy Hodge as director, the show views these extraordinary individuals through the eyes of inquisitive 10-year-old pupil Jade, hiding in the as yet unopened ‘Gallery of Greatness’ during a school trip to a local museum.
The biographical vignettes are brought to life by Jade Kennedy, Renée Lamb, Frances Mayli McCann and Christina Modestou, with Éva-Marie Saffrey turning in a tremendously engaging performance as one of four talented young actresses alternating as Jade.
All of the adult cast play multiple characters, demonstrating incredible breadth and versatility, although it can be a little challenging at times for the audience to build a rapport with them: no sooner have we have become familiar with a given actress in one role than she segues straight into another.
In view of its portrayal of famous historical females, comparison of Fantastically Great Women Who Changed The World with Six seems inevitable, particularly since the cast includes Modestou and Lamb, both of whom originated the roles of queens in the latter. Although very different in outlook, these two shows certainly stand up well against one another.
Fantastically Great Women Who Changed The World will undoubtedly appeal to both children and adults, given its educational outlook and its frequent humorous asides. Some of the finer detail of the lives and achievements of these outstanding females may become lost given the rapid pace of presentation of information in a 75-minute show, but the vibrant programme supplies a paragraph of biography on each individual to ensure that audiences are never left behind.
The exposition of some of history’s most astonishing women is completed with eight showstopping songs written by Bush, Miranda Cooper and Jennifer Decilveo, including ‘Mary, Mary and Marie’, a number illustrative of the many ways in which the show creatively brings together females from different times and places (in this case, Mary Anning, Mary Seacole and Marie Curie, with an encore for Marie Christine Chilver) and imagines how they might have interacted.
Audra Cramer, Nicola T. Chang and Abbie Finn provide sensitive musical accompaniment, Chang even taking to the stage for a dazzling display of percussive pyrotechnics.
Inspired and inspiring, this fantastically great show offers a timely reminder that fantastically great people can, and do, change the world. Definitely go and see it – it really could be the next Six.
Christopher Wiley
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