Sylvia, a musical telling the life of Sylvia Pankhurst, first debuted at The Old Vic as a work in progress in 2018. A musical about the life of one of the most instrumental and yet overlooked suffragettes is one of the most intriguing concepts for a musical I have heard, so I was delighted that it has been reworked and revised in the same venue this season. The Old Vic is one of my favourite theatre venues, especially as its PwC programme offers tickets in previews for only £10. It’s therefore worth bearing in mind that I saw the musical in its first week of previews when changes were still being made, but it felt enough of a completed musical for it to be fair to share my thoughts!
Some moments of the musical suggested it could be one of the decade’s landmark productions. Beverley Knight’s vocals were sensational, while her portrayal of Emmeline Pankhurst’s journey from militant reformist to Conservative campaigner was both ruthless and genuine. Sharon Rose lead the cast as Sylvia, garnering the sympathy of the audience and rivaling Beverley’s vocal range at points, certainly no easy feat.
However, these moments that had me completely amazed were diminished somewhat by creative decisions and plot choices that ranged from baffling to careless. Winston Churchill represents ‘the establishment’ against anti-suffrage movement, and is depicted a weak man who submits to the beliefs of his mother and later his wife. Although there are a couple of other male characters who criticise women throughout the show, the decision to villainise Churchill seems to be driven by only one factor – he’s one of the most famous figures in history and therefore easy to recognise and blame. His reasoning against female suffrage in the musical is purely that his mother was against female enfranchisement, which lacks any nuance and is a lazy approach to retelling of history. The infighting within the women’s suffragette movement, hinted at by Sylvia and her mother Emmeline’s differences in the second half, was so interesting and yet almost untouched upon, as instead the musical insisted on having several songs of men expressing their supposed superiority.
There’s a couple of points in the plot where Sylvia’s status is demoted to love interest – her first solo song is dedicated to Keir Hardie, the first leader of the Labour party and a man who she fell in love with at seven years old… no, not a childhood romance, he was a grown adult and best friends with her parents. How romantic. As the plot portrays her evolution as a women’s rights activist, it simultaneously follows the growth of their relationship. Doing so without any witty asides about the creepiness of that dynamic, the show misses opportunities to both laugh at itself (strange, since it’s so keen to get a laugh out of pantomine duo Churchill and mother) and actually condemn the power dynamic of a man taking advantage of a young woman who fell in love with him before she was old enough to even read properly. It’s simply that more should be expected by a show that’s central focus is… women’s rights.
There have been cries in abundance that Sylvia wants to be the British Hamilton, and to that I ask… would that really be a bad thing? Is there really only space for one hip-hop historical musical to exist? Although one of the songs at the beginning of act 2 (I believe it was ‘I Know Where You Live’) sounded eerily familar to the point of plagarising Hamilton’s Cabinet Battle #1 riff, for the most part the music of Sylvia had its own original and authentic sound. It’s a sound that I really hope is released as a soundtrack soon, as questionable plot choices aside, the production is musically a success.
With a minimal set, screens do some heavy lifting projecting dates and locations to progress the story. However, the use of (or lack of) colour throughout the show is striking – the outfits, set and screen projections are primarily monochrome, save for some moments of bright crimson red, representing the Labour Party in its infancy, blood, and anger – when it is employed at its richest, dominating the later scenes of the East End Suffragettes where we see Sylvia at her most militant. Given the suffragettes established purple and green colour palette, the decision to reject this brings the focus on Sylvia as an indivdual instead of the wider suffrage movement, despite that the story doesn’t always do this. The focus on Emmeline in the first half, the interlude of Emily Wilding Davison’s story in act 2 and opposition by political men all drag the story away from Sylvia. There lies the musical’s biggest flaw – that it doesn’t always tell the story it wants to.
Sylvia has moments of greatness and is definitely a worthy new musical to go and see, I just wish that rather than trying to do too many things at once, it made the most of those great moments to allow Sylvia’s story to truly shine.
Sylvia is booking at The Old Vic until 8 April.
