The stories are ripe to be told – Peake presents them with candour, comedy, and craft, finds reviewer Paul Bateson.
In her first collection of plays, writer and BAFTA-nominated actor Maxine Peake introduces four unique stories of resistance and passion, based on real women.
There's a good chance you haven't come across the people in these plays before; but that's the point. As Peake explains in her introduction, she is ‘on a mission to write about working class women who made an impact on their community’. These plays are unashamedly provoking, shining a spotlight on pioneers, Northwomen, who have overcome various obstacles to achieve what they have.
The stories are ripe to be told – Peake presents them with candour, comedy, and craft.
Beryl (2014) tells the life of record-breaking Leeds born cyclist Beryl Burton; The Last Testament of Lillian Bilocca (2017) a story of Big Lil, as she was known, who campaigned for changes in the safety laws of the trawler industry in late 1960s Hull; Queens of the Coal Age (2018) about Dot Kelly the ‘battling granny’ who occupied a colliery for five days in 1993 in protest of pit closures; and ‘Betty!' A sort of musical’ (2023), an ambitious comic biography of Baroness Betty Boothroyd, MP and first female speaker of the House of Commons.
Peake says in the introduction; she has felt in her career, there have not been enough substantial, inspiring, roles for women, so naturally each text here has great options for lead female roles. There are male roles too, however, and all the stories are suitable for small, mixed casts.
Each play is pacey and fun to perform, and allows for multirole, direct address, and other non-naturalistic elements. Beryl is the most straightforward, great dialogue. You'll find comedy gold (coal?) in Queens of the Coal Age. As with some of Peake's other work, alongside comedy, comes message. These plays educate and evoke. There are some beautiful and challenging monologues in The Last Testament… and some interesting folk song/poems that can be presented chorally and creatively. Betty! is perhaps the most complicated to stage: a play within a play features, as does Drag Thatchers and Irish-dancing Iain Paisleys!
Four inspiring stories of inspiring people, that make for great theatre.