Mary, Mary, quite contrary

Photo: Mark Brenner

Daniel Nelson

The title, Marys Seacole, tells you this isn’t going to be a straightforward biography of the Jamaican nurse and entrepreneur who set up the British Hotel behind the lines in the Crimean War in the 1850s.

Jackie Sibblies Drury’s play is like a Picasso painting, offering several perspectives of Mary, including girl, daughter, woman, businesswoman, doctress, sometimes simultaneously, sometimes Marys in other centuries.

“You’re dealing with someone’s anticipation of what the play is going to be or what it should be saying about this person. But then the exciting thing is to disrupt that in some way,” Drury has said. Disrupt she certainly does.

It’s a biography, a melodrama, a Restoration comedy, a monologue, a Jacobean drama; it’s funny, shocking, original, repetitive, psychological; it’s about race, history, women, Marys and their mothers, and Black women who, then and now, nurse and care for elderly or ill White people..

Through the smoke of disruption a possible picture of Seacole emerges. ‘Possible’ because though she was honoured in her time (including a fundraising gala on the Thames attended by tens of thousands of people) and wrote an autobiography, she suffered the fate of most well-known Black people in Britain and was forgotten for almost a century.

Drury emphasises  Seacole’s own words - "I am a Creole, and have good Scots blood coursing through my veins. My father was a soldier of an old Scottish family" - but doesn’t belabour the issue of colourism. Seacole’s mother, however, is given a blistering speech about White racist society, even if  it is  is undermined by the general mayhem and by sounding like a crafted speech rather than the expression of a character, though it was turned into a heartfelt call and response by a member of the audience on  the night I saw the production.

There’s much to like (including some excellent acting) and to criticise, a lot to enjoy, and even more to think about. In a recent interview with The Observer newspaper, Drury said, “My favourite thing is to point something out, ask a couple of questions and then just leave and let people work it out.”

Long after this show has finished, you’ll still be arguing and thinking.

* Marys Seacole, £45/£32.50/ £20/ £10 is at The Donmar Warehouse, 41 Earlham Street, WC2, until 4 June. Info: 3282 3808/ https://www.donmarwarehouse.com