Ava Pickett has had the career start every writer dreams of. Your debut play about Anne Boleyn (but not really about Anne Boleyn) becomes the hottest ticket in town at the Almeida Theatre and earns you two Olivier nominations. In the process, you gain the attention of it-girl star of the moment Margot Robbie, who declares you a generational talent. Oh, and you’re also writing a film about Joan of Arc with Baz Luhrmann. Because why not.
Pickett’s ascension has been so swift, that, I must admit, I approached 1536’s West End transfer with slight scepticism. Could it really live up to all that the hype? The answer, thankfully, is: yes, and then some.
Co-produced with Robbie’s production company Lucky Chap, 1536 is an astonishing production. Director Lyndsey Turner has crafted a heady, sensory experience, one that is jolted forward by faultless performances from the female leads. The 110-minute one-act run time might raise eyebrows, yet the show never loses pace, and refuses to overcook things either. 1536 is a once-in-a-blue-moon theatrical experience. I laughed. I cried. I probably could have screamed too.
The year, it’ll come as no surprise to hear, is 1536, where three women in their early twenties sit in a field in rural Essex. With so little going on in their lives, the girls are scandalised by the goss Jane (Liv Hill) has heard from London: that King Henry VIII has had his second wife Anne Boleyn arrested. The practical Mariella (Tanya Reynolds) wonders aloud if Henry will kill Anne. Anna (Siena Kelly) brushes it off: ‘King’s don’t kill their wives. It just doesn’t happen.’
Initially inseparable, this trio are gloriously tactile, with the constantly shifting power dynamics between them playing out in through the slightest of facial twitches and bodily movements. Each character has an archetype by which the audience – like society at large – recognises and judges them. Through their cheeky back-and-forth, depths and nuance are naturally revealed. Anna (asserted with confidence by Kelly as the natural leader) is beautiful but poor, with a reputation that is threatening to catch up with her. The wealthy, soon-to-be-married Jane is terrified of wedded life and all it entails. Mariella works as a midwife, yet is pained by the memory of a man who could never marry her due to their different societal standings.
1536 is a once-in-a-blue-moon theatrical experience
Their prospects might be bleak, but Anna, Jane and Mariella are not women without hope. It’s conveyed in their lively, laugh-out-loud dialogue, which, when expressed through their contemporary Essex accents, brings to mind a scene from EastEnders or TOWIE (Kelly’s accent is particularly Amy Childs, and all the funnier for it). But while exclamations of ‘fackin’ hell’ might fill the air, the script is subtle enough to keep 1536 from feeling like an easy revisionist reimagining. The language is somewhat anachronistic, but the energy is believable. Who’s to say that women didn’t talk like this when they were alone?
Yet with each scene, marked by a black out and Tingying Dong’s surging soundtrack, the group begins to fracture. Anne Boleyn’s propects are getting worse, and it’s bleeding into these three normal women’s lives, as Mariella worries that ‘the men are changing’. And they are. Anna’s lover Richard (Oliver Johnstone) grows aggressive, and even Mariella’s former love William (George Kemp) loses his bottle. The threat of violence, both sexual and physical, is actualised in traumatic detail. When Anne is beheaded, the backdrop, which has transitioned from an orange glow to a blood red wash over the play’s duration, is lit by the glow of the field’s smoking grass. The men are not just changing. ‘The men are celebrating,’ Jane says, horrified.
In Pickett’s script – which has undergone some significant changes since the original Almeida run – the comedy never lets up. If anything, the attempt to maintain a sense of humour only adds to the gnawing feeling of dread Turner melds. 1536 was a terrible time to be a woman, no doubt. Yet the misogyny spewed by all genders on stage instantly evokes the here and now. Once again, there is no hammering on the head with this feminist message; no wink when Anna asks Mariella in despair: ‘Has it always been like this? Will it always be like this.’ There is just stillness. You can answer that one in your head.
In Girl on Girl, an eviscerating recent book about how pop culture in the ’90s and ’00s destroyed feminist progress, journalist Sophie Gilbert argues that the way society feels about women writ large is not just reflected in its treatment of the famous women of the time, but directly influenced by it. Pickett’s script follows this same big picture method of thinking, making it all the more raw and real.
We know the way Anne’s story ends; we sang about it in school, for god’s sake. Yet Pickett’s words draw clear lines between the ways in which Anne Boleyn was treated and how it impacted women then, and how that event’s ripple effects are still felt in a time when witchhunts play out on livestreams for us all to weigh in on. Under Turner’s direction, this message, and the anger and horror it conjures, never lets up. Neither, somehow, does the entertainment. Pickett’s play is a tour de force, and 1536 one of those theatrical moments that stays with you for a very long time.
