Elizabeth Southerden Thompson’s 1874 painting The Roll Call was a sensation in its day. People queued for hours to see her depiction of a line of wounded and fatigued soldiers during the Crimean war. The demand to see it was such that a police officer was deployed to hold back the crowds.
Yet, despite her talent and fame, Thompson was not elected to the prestigious Royal Academy – she lost out by two votes – and her name is not well enough known today. Playwright Ellen Brammar first heard of her via Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History podcast and was immediately intrigued by her story. The artist is the subject of Brammar’s new play, Modest, a co-production between Hull gig-theatre specialists Middle Child and the queer-led theatre company Milk Presents.
The playwright says that a line in Thompson’s autobiography encapsulates her character: “I will single myself out.” She did so by painting military scenes rather than more traditionally feminine subjects such as fruit and flowers. She did not glorify war but showed soldiers exhausted by battle, bloodied and at the point of collapse. There was an honesty to them that people found moving.
Thompson’s story is all about “breaking down barriers” says Paul Smith, artistic director of Middle Child. “One of the main reasons we exist as a theatre company is to try to widen who makes art, who speaks about art and who accesses it.”
Smith had seen Milk Presents’ previous shows including Joan, a reimagining of the story of Joan of Arc, and liked the way that the company used drag to interrogate myth and history. A play about a Victorian artist who was hugely popular in her day but has since been largely forgotten felt like the ideal basis for a collaboration.
“She was transgressing gender and the expectations of women at the time,” says Milk Presents’ Luke Skilbeck who will co-direct the production with Smith. “That’s a queer act.” It is also important to remember, Skilbeck adds, that Thompson was a woman of considerable privilege, creating work that chimed with the sensibilities of her day. “She was someone whose popularity was tied to empire” – to the extent that Queen Victoria ended up buying The Roll Call.
The paradox of Thompson’s privilege, what it allowed her to achieve and the barriers she nevertheless faced, sits at the heart of the production.
The play will show the modest and humble version of herself that Thompson presented to the public – “there’s a whole song about her being a sweet little woman,” says Brammar – and the person she was in private, who knows she has talent and feels she deserves recognition. “I love the idea of having this woman on stage who was unapologetically arrogant and confident,” she says.
Modest’s cast is made up of drag performers including Death Drop’s LJ Parkinson and Emer Dineen who plays Elizabeth. Drag kings will depict the academicians, those men intent on keeping Thompson from having a seat at the table. “If we had men saying the things that they said it would be gross. We’re sending it up a little bit,” says Brammar.
“Drag brings a playfulness and irreverence to things,” says actor and drag king Isabel Adomakoh Young, who also stars in the show. “It’s a vehicle for having quite difficult conversations. It puts things in this stylised, heightened comic space.”
The show will also be informed by the spirit of music hall, Smith explains, because it was a popular form of entertainment at the time and it accommodated different forms of gender expression. While the language of the period may have been different, says Skilbeck, “If I was transgender at the time and wanted to find other trans people, I’d probably find them in the music hall.”
“I want people to have the sense that they are in a queer space,” they continue. “So, we cast people who really know how to work the crowd.”
“The show is not a straightforward biography,” stresses Smith. It doesn’t set out to deify Thompson, rather it presents her as someone flawed and nuanced. Brammar echoes this. Having created a version of Thompson for the stage, “I feel very affectionate towards her, but I also find her infuriating. She doesn’t have all the answers. She often makes choices you don’t want her to make.”
This is part of what makes her so appealing as a character, Brammar adds. She isn’t a beacon or a woman out of time. “I sometimes wonder whether she would like what we are doing with her story. And, actually, I’m not sure,” says Skilbeck.
• Modest is at Hull Truck from 23-27 May, then touring until 15 July.
