1536 at the Almeida Theatre – review

The year is 1536. In far away London, King Henry VIII has just arrested his Queen and sent her to the Tower for treason. In an Essex village, three young women, friends since childhood, can hardly believe the news that takes days to reach them. Even once they do, they can’t imagine that the goings on in a court far away will have any impact on their lives. It seems far more important to flirt with the baker for a free loaf of bread.

That’s the promising premise of Ava Pickett’s first play which won the 2024 Susan Smith Blackburn prize and received a special commendation from the George Devine Award. The accolades are deserved. This is an original and exciting debut, given an exceptional production by director Lyndsey Turner and an outstanding cast.

The cleverness of the play is the way it refracts some of the most famous events in history through the lives of unknown women, and in the process paints a portrait of a society where a King’s actions validate the behaviour of men, encouraging them to treat women as disposable things.

There’s a hint of Gilead about the oppression the women describe – and a sense of contemporary concerns too. But what makes 1536 so engrossing is the vivid way it portrays these women and their dilemmas. You believe in the lives they are describing.

The friends are sharply delineated. We first meet the outspoken Anna (Siena Kelly) having cheerful sex against a tree. She’s beautiful and full of energy, ready to take on a world that is going to brand her – like Anne Boleyn – a whore. Her friend Jane (Liv Hill) is all buttoned-up anxiety and flustered virtue, while Mariella (Tanya Reynolds) seems pragmatic and philosophical, a midwife with a secret sadness, a friend who cares about others, a woman who knows her place.

Their dialogue is wonderfully supple and lively; historical facts emerge like gossip. They absorb the information as it applies to them. Told that tastes are changing with Boleyn’s fall from grace, Mariella quickly says: “I never suited French fashion so that’s a win for me.” The shift in their status as their lives change is carefully marked; so is the sense of how narrow their options are. They have to live these lives. Others are not available.

Turner’s direction is both powerful and full of grace. On a set by Max Jones that puts a blasted tree amidst a field of corn and thistles, lit by Jack Knowles (working to a concept devised by Tim Lutkin) to mark the passing of the days and the marked shifts in mood, she creates a series of striking tableau, both realistic and stylised. At one moment of crisis, Mariella in brown stands over a seated Anna in a purple skirt, and it looks like a work of art.

Towards the end, Pickett’s grasp of her narrative slips and too many things happen at once. But the performances never waver, even when submerged with plot. Reynolds combines pin-sharp comic timing with a heartbreaking ability to let her smile fade from her face; Hill brings great pathos to Jane, determined to be good, to keep her eyes down, while Kelly’s wire-cracker vitality makes Anna’s trajectory all the more convincing. As representatives of the men who repress and oppress them, Angus Cooper and Adam Hugill both play their part.

It’s an impressive, involving evening marking Pickett as a real talent to watch.