Having missed Schrödinger’s Lesbians by emerging theatre group Themis Theatre, I grabbed the opportunity to accept an invite to watch it at The Glitch, a friendly and cosy space and the sole survivor of Vault Festival’s former venues.
We are back in Ancient Greece, and Sappho challenges us to name a lesbian writer other than her from the period. After all, no one wrote in all their many plays and novels, poems and tracts, about such people, did they?
But she opens a door and lets us into her friendship with Anactoria, and cautious reconnection with her former girlfriend Atthis, and shows that women have always been ‘Sapphic’ in much the same way they are now.
There’s the awkward ‘meet cute’ and flirtation, the unlikely denials and assertions of wanting to be ‘just friends’, and the conflict which comes from the love triangle that unfolds as Sappho celebrates her birthday and Anactoria comes to terms with the anniversary of a lost love.
The three actors in this (Charlotte Boyle as Sappho, Libby Boyd as Atthis, and Ruby Blue Tansey-Thomas as Anactoria) are alll excellent and engage fully with Boyd’s thoughtful script.
The show plays with norms and stereotypes and offers some light-hearted puns alongside some pertinent points about how the world treats women in general and gay women in particular.
Director Bobbie-Jean Henning, a new collaborator for Themis, sets the action with audience on all four sides and stages proceedings so that no one misses a beat or a facial expression for too long.
The space is decorated with fruit, leaves, and letters underlying Sappho’s reputation as a poet of some substance. These days, her work is largely known for the fragments that have been passed down and have been reinterpreted in many ways over the years.
In Boyd’s interpretation, Sappho was the ultimate LGBTQ+ icon, and her voice is as vibrant as ever. She’s a modern woman in a costume of white lace fabric over modern clothes. She bakes bread, badly, and is overly interested in the constellation of the stars above her. When she has to say to one of the women in her life, “I wanted it to be you” it feels raw and real.
The lighting design by Dmitry Bashtanov captures the mood of warm, friendly evenings, moments of passionate longing, and disguised desperation. It makes Schrödinger’s Lesbians a beautifully composed show with a heart in it.
While we hear of Achilles’ heel, the beauty of Helen of Troy, and more, the idea we are missing stories of women loving other women in the long past is a potent one.
4 stars.
Schrödinger’s Lesbians is at The Glitch until 14 Apr. Details are here.
For more on Themis Theatre and further dates for this show, check their website.
Image credit: Lidia Crisafulli