Politics
The House Article | A “fresh and furious” play: Baroness Thornton reviews ‘1536’
Tanya Reynolds as Mariella and Siena Kelly as Anna | Photo by Helen Murray
4 min read
Examining the ripple effect of the trial and execution of Anne Boleyn on the lives of everyday Tudor women, Ava Pickett’s play draws powerful parallels with modern day misogyny
A fresh and furious play, the performances of 1536’s central characters are absolutely brilliant. These three sparky young women of Essex are supported by a superb production which makes highly effective use of a black scrim. Yes. I had to look that up.
The early parts of 1536 present a wonderful portrayal of the kind of relationships which can exist between young women. On stage and screen we often see blokes joshing – yet not so often women, especially those with little education, wealth or ‘interesting lives’.
Before the plot unfolds, we witness loving and raucous teasing – a highly charged conduct, very rarely revealed to those outside the inner circle; the joy fairly radiates and is instantly appealing.
In the play’s programme we find a quote by Hilary Mantel: “History is not the past… it’s what is left in the sieve when the centuries have run through it.” And then the programme states this: “Women of the past were ground to such powder that history’s sieve catches nothing of them.”
In that sense 1536 is letting us hear something of the conversations that must have happened during the arrest, incarceration, show trial and execution of Henry VIII’s second wife Anne Boleyn. This is Mantel’s version of “fiction stepping in” which is not to say the conversations were ahistorical, only that they have to be inferred.
Powerful men can still have a catastrophic impact on women’s lives
Set against the backdrop of Boleyn’s arrest and execution in faraway London, 1536 is darkly comic in places, but elsewhere it resonates intensely with depressing aspects of life in the 21st century. Powerful men can still have a catastrophic impact on women’s lives, especially the lives of poor young women. But don’t get me started on Jeffrey Epstein.
Boleyn was arrested on 2 May 1536 and executed just 17 days later on 19 May with only a show trial in between.
Relying on two-day old news, at first the women find it hard to believe “the Queen” could be in any kind of serious peril. For the young women the story quickly moves on from gossip to something a great deal more serious: the nature of their lives and likely futures – and how closely they are tied to the men in their current or future existence.
The next bulletin from the capital reveals that while adultery is ordinarily a matter for the Church courts, in the case of a woman who apparently bewitched the King, and tricked him into marrying her, it becomes a capital offence for which the sentence is death.
The fact that everyone knew Henry pursued Anne for years and changed the law – and indeed the established Church – solely to make it possible for him to marry her counted for nothing.
We have seen it often – a woman is monstered in social media and newspapers, her reputation and life trashed. Lies are created then embellished, believed particularly if she is a woman engaged in public life – or, as in this story, just a lively poor young woman with dreams and aspirations above her class and sex.
Find time to see this play – though with an age rating of 14+ (there are sex scenes but no nudity) it’s something to bear in mind when deciding who to take with you.
Baroness Thornton is a Labour peer
1536
Written by: Ava Pickett
Directed by: Lyndsey Turner
Venue: Ambassadors Theatre, London, WC2 – until 1 August
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