Sylvia – Old Vic Theatre

Beverley Knight and Sharon Rose in Sylvia at The Old Vic, London. Picture: Manuel Harlan

Sylvia continues at the Old Vic Theatre, London until 8 April 2023.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

There are few families who could claim to have changed the world of British politics as the Pankhursts. The Women’s Social and Political Union, the suffragist movement calling for the right to vote for women, was formed in the family’s Manchester home in 1903, with family matriarch Emmeline Pankhurst in charge and the heavy involvement of her daughters Christabel, Adela and Sylvia.

The Old Vic’s musical Sylvia, a coproduction with Kate Prince’s ZooNation, was first shown to the public as a work-in-progress form in 2018. Even then, with Act II mainly performed book-in-hand and a sense of rough-and-readiness that comes with a musical still in its gestating stages, there was a palpable sense of something interesting and vital being created.

What it did not feel like was unique. At the time, Hamilton was still one of the freshest West End shows, having opened in December the previous year. Alongside it, a retelling of history using modern musical and dance forms that are traditionally Black-led felt like an attempt to replicate Lin-Manuel Miranda’s phenomenon, without necessarily sharing its heart – a self-examination of a country’s history, for good or ill.

Five years later, and both time and heavy refinement allow Sylvia to stand on its own terms much better. Yes, the mechanisms are the same – the music (by ZooNation stalwarts Josh Cohen and DJ Walde) draws heavily on gospel, R&B, and other Afro-Caribbean dance styles. Placing an era of history that was dominated by white faces in the hands of a majority Black cast similarly inverts our usual expectations of historical reenactment.

But rather than being a mere copycat, Sylvia now has the confidence to reuse Hamilton’s techniques rather than be a facsimile of them. And so the work has grown into a closer relationship with our political past, and what it says about our political present. History repeats, echoes rippling forwards and backwards as we frame the struggles of yesterday in the context of today. Prince’s book and lyrics do not overegg the parallels, but her work as a choreographer and director (coupled with a set design by Ben Stones that comes alive with Andrzej Goulding’s animated projections) makes them hard to ignore.

And the biggest tool in Prince’s arsenal is her cast. Sharon Rose as the titular Sylvia Pankhurst embodies the character’s growth so well, from being the meek underachiever (at least compared to sister Christabel, in their mother’s eyes) to a woman who grew to challenge the matriarch’s view of the struggle for women’s suffrage and fought for rights that extended far beyond allowing a relatively small number of women to vote in elections.

Rose’s vocal performance works on the same trajectory: Sylvia is small in stature and voice to begin with, blossoming as she moves to London and gradually finds her voice. By the end she is a belting powerhouse, and it would be a hard heart who could withstand her impassioned pleas.

As part of her growth into womanhood, Sylvia embarks on an ill-advised affair with family friend (and leader of the nascent Independent Labour Party) Keir Hardie, played by Alex Gaumond with an air of benevolent insouciance that almost makes one root for the relationship, even though Hardie was married with a family at the time. There is a slight worry when Hardie amends one of Sylvia’s “Votes for Women” banners, scratching out the last word and replacing it with “All”. That motion has echoes of reactions to the Black Lives Matter movement, when others suggested that All Lives Matter. But while that response was intended to belittle and diminish a movement crying out for change, Hardie’s emendation is the spur Sylvia needs: Votes for Women, yes – but votes for all women, and for all the working classes too.

Among the supporting cast, the Churchills provide the most interest: Jay Perry’s Winston, determined to resist the scourge of women daring to fight for their correct place in the world, is the piece’s only out-and-out antagonist. His own family battles reflect society at large: Jade Hackett as his mother, a woman not afraid to pull out all the Afro-Caribbean stops to emphasise her desire for nothing to change, is hilarious and engaging, while Verity Blyth’s Clementine portrays a sense of stoicism and quiet determination that suggest she is much the better politician than her blustering husband.

But the greatest performance of all comes from Beverley Knight as the matriarch, Emmeline. Knight commands the stage just as her character dominated her family. It is such a monumental performance that, one feels, her entire career trajectory – from chart-topping R&B star to one of our greatest musical theatre stars – has been entirely leading up to this point. In Prince’s book (assisted by playwright Lolita Chakrabarti as dramaturg) Emmeline is a real antihero: her determination to be the one in charge of the movement’s course provides even more conflict than all the protests, the fire bombings, the imprisonments and the force feedings ever could.

As with the work-in-progress presentation five years ago, Act I of Sylvia is structurally the most sound. There is a sense of propulsion through events that feels natural, whereas in the musical’s Act II that flow feels more forced. Perhaps this is due to the diminished time that the Pankhurst family are on stage together as Sylvia forges her own path: more likely it is down to longer periods of spoken book work. While the musical still holds together strongly by this point, a little of Act I’s magic dissipates.

In the years since Sylvia’s first outing, we have seen Black Lives Matter protests drawing attention both to police brutality and the disenfranchisement of a whole class of people: protests that were often broken up by even more force. We have also seen women’s silent defiance at the vigil for Sarah Everard being broken up by a ferocious police authority, intent on clamping down any attempt to correct the inequities inherent in the status quo.

As the line of suffragettes – mostly Black, all women – join hands in a line at the end of Act I, standing strong even as they reel from blows inflicted upon them, all these protests are reflected back at us. In the hundred-plus years since the fight for women’s suffrage began in earnest, we still have a long way to go.

Scott Matthewman