Bird Grove Review – The True Story of George Eliot Embellished in a Subtle Drama | stage

THis play is about George Eliot when she was known only as Mary Anne Evans, in her twenties and living in a respectable corner of Coventry in the 1840s with her father. Played by Elizabeth Dulau, she is not yet the unconventional woman she will become.

Later, Evans scandalizes high society to the point that her pushy father, Robert (Owen Teale), is desperate to please, not least so that he can secure a decent marriage for this intelligent, spirited daughter. Evans would go on to befriend freethinkers, cohabitate with a gentleman, and write some of the most famous and humane works of fiction in the English literary canon. Playwright Alexie Kay Campbell lays bare the seeds of every aspect of her life here, in her family’s home in Bird Grove.

The focus is on the girlish opposition and ideological conflict between Evans and her father. This comes in her announcement that she will no longer accompany him to church on Sundays because of her departure from traditional interpretations of the Bible. This results in her being expelled from Bird Grove.

In Anna Lidwisch’s production, there is humor linked to the serious drama, largely in the earlier, slower scenes. There’s a comedic plot twist around the marriage proposal: silly Horace Garfield (Johnny Broadbent), looking like a Dickensian caricature in his fancy tie and checked jacket, needs to get married in order to claim his inheritance and wants a marriage of convenience with Evans. Meanwhile, scandalous free-thinking couple Charles Bray (Tom Espiner) and Cara Bray (Rebecca Scruggs), whom Evans has befriended, sit in the lounge with French magician Mr. La Fontaine (James Staddon). It’s entertaining, but these minor characters don’t add much: the Brays are little more than facilitators for Mary’s ambitions to travel, write, and be her own woman, while the witch soon disappears.

The production is a halfway house between a play of ideas and a father-daughter drama. There are conversations that illustrate Evans’ burgeoning feminist consciousness (“I think we have to take that pen away from men,” she says) and drawing-room discussions about Christianity that present opposing arguments. But among them are some painfully emotional family scenes, made all the more powerful by their tender simplicity, with well-coordinated performances across the cast.

Some facts were changed: her father never threw Eliot out of the house, even though he disapproved of her questioning of the Christian faith, and the inheritance scheme, which saw Mary as an only daughter left with very little compared to her siblings, was not an act of revenge on his part but an imitation – and a second sister faced the same lack of wealth. This does not undermine the story here, but it may anger some Eliot enthusiasts. The issue of inheritance is not adequately addressed: Mary’s brother Isaac (Jolyon Cowie) explicitly states that he will take care of her.

However, the play has a subtle emotional power that slowly takes hold and it has a beautiful, powerful central performance from Dulau. It all takes place in Evans’ Georgian house, a pale blue wood-panelled space designed by Sarah Beaton, where several wallless rooms (parlour, kitchen, study) rotate with each changing scene. It mixes the naturalism of the drawing room with something more abstract in an interesting way. The fictional character Dorothea (Katie Eldred), from Eliot’s novel Middlemarch, makes a brief appearance to inspire her creator, complementing the uneasy sense of reality mixed with dreaminess. It’s a poignant moment that might have been a cliche. Mary sees her future in Dorothea, and grasps it with both hands.