The Last

Set in a 21st century world troubled by deadly plague, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s 1826 novel The Last Man is poignant and hugely relevant today. Written after the death of her husband and three of her children, it expresses Mary’s own sense of loss and isolation, and features characters based on Mary herself, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron and sister Claire Claremont.

This one-woman adaptation explores the book’s biographical elements along with Mary’s use of gender. It draws on her graphic depiction of a world wracked by pandemic and her warnings of the dangers of mankind’s arrogance towards the world we live in.