PLAY REVIEW: 1536 ★★★

A new play by Ava Pickett, 1536 reinterprets the time period, giving light to the voices of women and how they felt about their treatment, with the beheading of Anne Boleyn by Henry VIII in the background, seeing it with the same horror we do today to demonstrate that nothing much has changed and these were not solely ‘different times with different values’.

With direction by Lyndsey Turner, the piece moves along well staged, though the phenomenal concept of the play from Pickett struggles to root the conversation enough within the piece, leading to the conversation and the parallels to today to lack in as much richness as they have the potential to be afforded. The play increases in intensity as it nears the end, horrifying how the immediate and yet unexpected turn of the men the women are closest to is as dangerous as it is today, and you feel empathetic rage at just how impossible life’s situations feel for a women surrounded by life-threatening patriarchy, and so it’s unfortunate that it doesn’t grab this much vitality throughout.

There is also a frame of white light encompassing the acting space and while the reasoning behind this is understood, it gets in the way of our immediacy to the action and so could it have been possible to demonstrate the same effect in a different way?

Liv Hill, Sienna Kelly and Tanya Reynolds as the group of friends, Jane, Anna and Mariella, respectively, are all brilliant and play off each other with a great dynamic. Anna has, arguably, the central through line of the play, and Kelly is fantastic with their material. Hill also portrays a great characterisation and Adam Hugill (Richard) playing one of the two male presences contributes a terrifying performance.