Astell and Woolf Review – Women writers connect and share sherry in the afterlife | Theater

Mary Astell is not known for her knitting. If she is remembered at all, she was England’s first feminist. In 1694, he published Great Idea For Momsa case against women’s education. But here she has knitting needles and a beautiful pink woolen string. He is as surprised as anyone.

In Shelagh Stephenson’s jokes, that only makes her more anxious. He’s in some kind of afterlife: it can’t be purgatory because that would be too Catholic for the high Anglicans, but it doesn’t look like heaven. In fact, it seems like a repository for women who are about to be forgotten. The walls designed by Amy Watts have been given a spooky makeover to remember. What difference does it make if he could weave or not if he has to be written out of history?

That is not a problem for his heavenly friend. Virginia Woolf. The author’s place is fixed and he is free to move around, while Astell is tied to a rope and can be pulled at any time (shades of Waiting for Godot’s Chance). That divides them, as do their views on religion, science and the centuries that separate them.

Played by Phillippa Wilson and Tessa Parr, formerly thick and stoic as Astell, older and more imposing as Woolf, they do a funny double act. In Karen Traynor’s production, they also find common ground: in their independent thinking, rejection of authority and love of laughter – not to mention a late taste for sherry.

While Sartre’s No Exit says hell is other people, Astell and Woolf relegate the devil to oppressors. Stephenson, whose play is the third in the “Cullercoats trilogy” later A Northern Odyssey and Harriet Martineau’s Dream Danceshe is not the first to denounce the silencing and oppression of women, but comparing writings over the centuries, she cites the principles of progress, the struggles that still exist and the sacrifices made by the pioneers of women’s rights.

They do this very cleverly, which makes the drama jump, but the fun of the drama is the dialogue and not the main. Women’s scorn is variously fast, silly and passionate, but without haste, where they go is not slow to show itself.