The three women in Mary’s Daughters, a new play by Kaya Bucholc and Will Wallace, focuses on Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) and her daughters, Fanny Imlay and Mary Shelley.
Directed by Kay Brattan, the pre-show set up groans with discordant music and three women in long black dresses and hair up-dos arrange chairs and take their places.
Each takes on a colour to distinguish them: Mary, the mother, red; Fanny, the suffering storyteller, gold; Mary, the daughter and writer, blue.
Wollstonecraft was a noted feminist, philosopher, and free spirit, best remembered now for A Vindication for the Rights of Women, which she wrote in 1792.
Her ‘love child’, Fanny (1794-1816) was the lost child, losing her mother when she was three, rejected by Percy Shelley, who took her sister as mistress and later, wife.
And Mary (1797-1851), wrote Frankenstein in 1818, a book about which Fanny asks in Mary’s Daughters, “Am I a monster?” (was the title inspired by her given name of Frances?).
The three women are all portrayed by young actresses of similar age (Megan Carter, Kaya Bucholc, Rachael Reshma). They are speaking to us from beyond the grave, mother and children.
There are love affairs, grief and loss, and the reality of being an 18th century woman. Bucholc and Brattan impart a lot of information, but the personal overtakes the politics.
Fanny, the least famous of the trio, has the most to say and berates both the mother she barely knew and the sister who betrayed her. Bucholc brings this missing piece of the family jigsaw back to us through her script and performance.
It is a contemplative and serious play which pulls away from the literary and cultural success and legacy of the two Marys, rather spending a little too long on them in relation to men.
By the end, there is a lighter sense of gossip and theatrics I would have welcomed earlier to distract from the general gloom of abandonment, depression, and deaths in infancy.
There is good work here, especially in terms of movement and in the cast’s commitment to their roles, but a slightly more triumphant piece seems to be just out of reach under the surface.
Mary’s Daughters has clear sound and visuals throughout and is running at The Space until 30 Mar with tickets here. I reviewed from the livestreamed presentation on 23 Mar.
***.5