The Divine Mrs S

Hampstead Theatre, 05/04/24

Credit: Johan Persson

Final rating: ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

It is always a joy to witness a brand new comedy come to the stage. This play, by April De Angelis, focuses on a strong female titular character, set in the 18th century, as she grapples with being a successful actor while mistreated by the men that surround her in both her personal and professional life. Rachel Stirling deserves heaps of praise for her portrayal of Mrs Sarah Siddons, commanding the audience’s attention for 120 minutes, on stage for practically every minute of the play. Praise is also due for her male counterpart, Philip Kemble – her less-gifted acting partner brother-cum-theatre manager – portrayed enjoyably by Dominic Rowan. He often provides a sharp quip or quick fire one liner to peak the audience’s interest in the main story, and his portrayal of how to ‘over act’ was very amusing.

With all the action taking place ‘backstage’ – or at least, from behind the actor’s point of view – the set was relatively simple. A dressing room downstage, with wings in the middle and then a working arch and curtain far upstage – with a black back wall and lights – to look deceptively like the front of house in reverse. The production’s use of echo-y sound effects to resemble the audience from afar was very effective – adding to our own feelings of awkwardness, delight or amusement. The colours were all very beige, and apart from the odd moment, the lighting remained fairly consistent for the entire show.

I very much enjoyed Siddons’ visit to a madhouse though, when she was going to research the role of a mad woman – with echo on the actor’s vocals, dark dingy lighting – the effect really looked and sounded great. It was a shame there was not a bit more of this to add some depth to the location of the action. I must also give a shout out to the subtle soundtrack – particularly during asides by Siddons – which helped to illustrate that these were our main character’s internal thoughts. The low level strings, coupled with bolder violins during full scene transitions, all worked well with the rest of the tone of the play.

For all the brilliant jokes in the script, the story was a little slow to get going. There were plenty of moments that perhaps felt a little unnecessary – and given the run time of 2hr20min with an interval, I think perhaps some cuts might’ve been advisable. For instance, upon learning Siddons is to be sent to Dublin to play Hamlet for a while, she engages and indeed shares a kiss with an actor who then never resurfaces – and also engages in a sword fight with them. While fun, it didn’t progress the story and actually just created more questions.

I also felt – while important – the number of borrowed monologues from Shakespeare, that our actors perform in front of their fake audience – was too high. The Lady Macbeth at the end went on too long – which I know is the point, because the real Siddons is famous for her human portrayal of the character – but this didn’t come across, partly because the extract was too long, but also partly because the moment came after already having sat through 2hr10 mins of the play – our capacity to digest this by then has wavered I fear.

I was also disappointed that the threat of Thomas Lawrence – heightened by “the list” at the start of the play – didn’t amount to very much at all. It felt as though he could’ve developed into a darker obstacle for Siddons to face, but he in the end rather felt like a damp squib, at worst goading our strong female lead and being in her dressing room at an inappropriate time – but it was brushed over rather swiftly without much consequence.

Overwhelmingly, I found myself laughing – in the right way, at a very good script targeting fellow actors and theatre-makers who appreciate the intricacies that go in to putting on a show. Rachel Stirling and Dominic Rowan are extremely watchable, supported well by Anushka Chakravarti, Eva Feiler, Sadie Shimmin and Gareth Snook. I think the play would’ve benefited greatly from a few cuts to reduce the runtime, and though director Anna Mackmin does a good job to tell the story of Sarah Siddons, there isn’t anything particularly groundbreaking about the staging or the pace, and perhaps there is more to explore with this bit of new comedy writing.