Modest at the Kiln Theatre – review

If you want to be an artist, you must go beyond being a man. But if you are a woman in 1870s Victorian London? Things get a lot more complicated. Which is the starting point for Ellen Brammar’s Modest, based on the life of Elizabeth Thompson, the first woman voted into the Royal Academy (RA) as an associate member.  There is much canvas to cover.

Set between 1874 and 1879 when Elizabeth first stunned the London art world with her war painting “Roll Call”, Modest becomes a series of passionate discussions about women’s suffrage and gender equality, interrupted by composer Rachel Barnes’ genre-busting musical numbers and Elizabeth’s painting away in set designer’s QianEr Jin’s ivory tower-like cage. Elizabeth and her sister Alice (played by transgender actress Fizz Sinclair), herself an award-winning poet and suffragette, argue over whether art and politics should be kept separate as Elizabeth’s success at the RA’s summer exhibition makes her into a powerful symbol for gender equality. At the RA, the heavily whiskered men in charge – played by drag kings – choke and splutter on their cigars at the thought of Elizabeth becoming an inspiration for thousands of women like her. In keeping with the drag kings tradition, the characteristics of these men are exaggerated – they are vapid, vain, and frightened, contrasting with Emer Dineen’s driven yet steely, modern portrayal of Elizabeth.

In fact, everyone is a caricature apart from Elizabeth, Alice and Bessie, a non-binary working-class factory worker who develops a crush on Elizabeth via her paintings. Over the course of the play, Elizabeth thinks she can be elected to the RA by trying to be “one of the lads” and allowing her talent to shine (she is a YBA, a hundred years too early) but she is slowly undone by the realisation that female talent does not impress the patriarchy, but instead makes it afraid. Alice – ardent, and passionate – believes that if Elizabeth can be elected, women’s lives will change forever. Like a broken Britannia in her red silk gown, Elizabeth collapses with the weight of it all. But it is perhaps Bessie for whom we feel the most. Elizabeth was born into privilege with a supportive family. Bessie has neither and as an aspiring young painter themselves, their ambitions seem far harder to achieve. The fact that Bessie can barely scrape enough money together to see “Roll Call” at the RA illustrates the economic disparity between the two.

Modest (co-directed by Luke Skilbeck and Paul Smith) sets out to explore Elizabeth’s story of nearly being voted into the RA and the issues of women’s suffrage at the time. By using music hall/cabaret tropes to do it, Modest, is able to include the struggles of non-binary /queer/trans women too – Frances (Isabel Adomakoh Young), a Black female artist, emphasises how isolated she is from her female contemporaries’ struggles. Like Elizabeth, who dons paint-smeared boxing gloves and smashes, Jenny Saville-like, a cling film canvas, the play delivers punch after punch. It is a hugely pleasurable watch.

Still, ambitious Modest can’t quite deal with all the issues with the seriousness that they demand. Whilst the drag kings flit excellently between playing the RA men and Alice’s sometimes reluctant suffrage cohorts – it doesn’t seem fair to contrast their caricature portrayals with the more in-depth portraits of Elizabeth, Alice and Bessie. Frances also feels like a tag-on.