The Divine Mrs S – Hampstead Theatre

April De Angelis’s last play – the contemporary Kerry Jackson at the National Theatre – failed to set the stage alight, so for her latest piece premiering at Hampstead Theatre she turns to an important period of theatre history, to the formidable Sarah Siddons, here at the height of her power as a stage performer, holding Theatre Royal Drury Lane audiences in thrall but bored by the material she is given and finding her life on and offstage constricted by her gender. A rather jolly experience, The Divine Mrs S has a biting wit, largely set in Sarah’s dressing room before and after performances, it explores the blending of career challenges with the demands and pressures of being a moral guardian of public decorum, bereaved mother recovering the loss of a beloved child, frustrated sister and controlled wife, all the while being adored by the public, critics and burgeoning playwrights who wish to harness her talents. Kerry Jackson may have struggled to truly represent modern women but De Angelis’s version of Sarah Siddons certainly does.

Although set principally in one location, The Divine Mrs S is filled with the world of the theatre, and the industry loves nothing more than turning attention back on itself, looking at the process of performance, the construction of playmaking and the customs associated with a life on the stage. And putting a woman at the centre of these stories creates opportunities to consider the dual pressure to be an actor who is never allowed to forget her gender and her domestic obligations no matter how potent her star power. Back in town, Ivo van Hove’s new show Opening Night offers an equivalent proposition, an actor unable to connect with the role she is offered and finding her age, marital and childbearing status greatly affects how the rest of the company responds to her. van Hove’s may be a contemporary story but de Angelis notes how Siddons was placed in an analogous situation exacerbated by her lack of status offstage – a breadwinner whose profits are consumed by her husband and whose brilliance is frequently tarnished by her jealous brother, the actor-manager Philip Kemble.

“Like a man but better,” the substance of De Angelis’s play is these eternal restrictions placed on a woman who can be at once a divine creature of fantasy and a piece of property controlled and restricted by patriarchal forces. What The Divine Mrs S does so well, so strikingly captured in Rachel Stirling’s performance, is to take the myth of Sarah Siddons and make her a flesh and blood woman, an actor and person with agency who also becomes far more than the author’s instrument. The character and scenario De Angelis has created is a focal point for these contrasting views of women across history and the illusion of theatrical freedom. Yet Sarah, more than any of the female creations in this plays, springs to life, motored by her desire to find a role worthy of her abilities and bringing a fresh perspective to the people in the dark looking for emotional release with and through her performances. De Angelis thus gives her directive purpose, allowing the character to narrate some of her own stage directions, talking directly to the twenty-first century audience in a moment of confederacy. Crucially, here, what she narrates and what Sarah actually then does are not always aligned, emphasising her relative powerlessness to effect the kind of change outside that exists within her. A woman out of time perhaps or a representation of all the things women have ever been if not allowed to express, reiterating De Angelis’s point that even a goddess of the stage could never be her true self even there.

Central to The Divine Mrs S is the relationship between Sarah and long-term co-star and brother Philip, referred to throughout as Kemble, whose sense of superiority dominates her choices of play and part which are underpinned by his refusal to acknowledge he is a lesser talent. He snipes at her, pays money directly to Sarah’s feckless husband living with his mistress elsewhere and sends her on thankless tours around the country to undermine her position with London audiences when he feels her becoming too popular. To further amplify himself, Philip forces Sarah to play devoted mothers and grieving widows, limited, samey parts that confine her talents and make space for him – although she still outshine shines him – but Philip then refuses to see her offstage as a real being, thoughtless about her own real emotions when demanding her return to the stage days after her daughter’s death at the start of the play and careless of the impact of leaving another sickly child to tour Ireland. Sarah as an emotive, expressive actor continually clashes against male expectations of women as incapable of true, deep feeling in real life. Philip’s envy is given shape by the public and press response that subsequently blames Sarah for these actions, labeling her unfit to be a mother and a harlot when she obeys the patriarchal obligations decided for her by the men in her life. And this becomes one of the play’s most arresting themes, how women are confined and blamed by men in their real life for the very things she is beloved for onstage.

The plot of The Divine Mrs S is a loose one, only coming properly into view at the start of Act Two when Sarah articulates her desire to find a play written by a woman that has all the range and impact of Hamlet, expressing her real inner life in three dimensions. The obstacles to this provided by her brother and the censor who must grant a license, drive this part of the story and give De Angelis’s central arguments greater shape. Act One, by contrast, is more enjoyably impressionistic, scenes of post-performance malaise, rehearsals and the treadmill of acting a season that nicely, if loosely, establish theatrical traditions and eighteenth into nineteenth-century business practice for the Hampstead Theatre audience. The concept of the actor-manager, the rise and fall of ticket prices and the experience of backstage life in dressing rooms is all laid out with a series of visitors dropping in endlessly to people the broader theatre culture – a clever shorthand of critics, fans, writers and influential patrons who contribute to the success of an actor’s career and an individual theatre’s business model. De Angelis plays all of this with affectionate humour as both the burden and the substance of being a star in a transitory life, performing one play while looking for the next thing to be.

And the writing is consistently sharp creating a through line in the play as the brother-sister rivalry (although it is never rivalry to the superior Siddons) takes on new forms throughout the story, De Angelis enjoying the representation of backstage life and the lack of grace displayed by her characters. Sarah certainly turns on the charm with critic Boaden or with the censor’s dominant wife Mrs Larpent and there is much to enjoy in the faux fawning that accompanies these scenes. But in creating Sarah as a rounded character, the writer places the public image of the actor in the more human context, presaging the need to ‘perform’ to these endless intruders with Sarah’s less gracious, earthier disdain for the structures of eighteenth-century theatre and the tiresome need to charm. The scathing banter between brother and sister as well as Sarah’s dismissive frustration with the wider company during rehearsals is lots of fun, so while the plot meanders the impression of her life that De Angelis creates is lively and engaging.

Central to that is Rachel Stirling’s delightful titular performance that fills out the reality of her character while also finding the moments of vulnerability and confinement that drive her behaviours in the play. Stirling brings some of the savagery from last year’s performance of Private Lives at the Donmar Warehouse, of which she was easily the best thing in a strange and unsuccessful interpretation, channeling some of Amanda’s ready wit and quick-fire dialogue in this similarly intelligent and confident woman. Her Sarah is the sharpest person on stage and De Angelis’s dialogue rattles away, Sarah rarely out-thought or bested in conversation which Stirling manages particularly effectively as she fires volley after volley at her tiresome companions. And it is infectious to see an actor so clearly enjoying their role.

But there is far more to Sarah than entertaining conversation and Stirling also explores the interplay of her character’s certainty about her performance capabilities, the illustrious reputation she has established with the public and belief in her own talent to play any kind of role and the limitations placed on her by the social structures in which she lives. While Stirling’s Sarah is never arrogant in the way her brother Kemble is, pleasingly she is a woman who knows her own strength and its effect on others, using her abilities on and off stage to try to create the opportunities she wants to develop her career – whether that be calming a public riot in the playhouse or manipulating the influential Mrs Larpent into approving seemingly scandalous material. But there is vulnerability here too, a quiet despair when she is outmaneuvered by patriarchal forces that take her money or send her off to inhospitable places, while in the final scenes of the play Stirling captures the clipping of Sarah’s wings as she is forced to make a choice between her reputation and her own satisfaction as an actor.

Dominic Rowan puts in an excellent comic performance as actor-manager Kemble, totally reliant on his sister’s allure to balance the box office but riven with petty jealousy and neediness for praise of his own more meager talents. It is a big, bombastic performance in many ways, Kemble lofty and self-aggrandising, filled with pomposity about his opinions and insight into the plays he performs which leads to numerous hilarious exchanges in Sarah’s dressing room and excellent chemistry with Stirling. But Rowan suggests the unspoken fear underneath that his sister is just better and more beloved than him, that he will be forgotten, making Kemble try all the harder to be admired with amusing consequences, often stooping to misdeeds to claim the spotlight.

Other characters in The Divine Mrs S are less well-drawn and while the parade of other actors, critics and theatre personnel can be lightly caricatured to suit the tone of De Angelis’s play, there is more to draw from Anushka Chakravati’s role as dresser Patti, a newcomer to Sarah’s service who escapes an unwanted marriage proposal and fends off the expectations of other men in the story. She becomes Sarah’s confident but like the maid in a Restoration Comedy, Patti could play a stronger role as the instrument of the drama, bringing her further into the story. Likewise, Eva Feiler’s Joanna Baillie is a light role as a rare woman playwright having to hide her gender to get a play staged and there is more to say about her life beyond Sarah’s and how her own trajectory plays out. Together the three central female roles need to better demonstrate that Sarah was not alone in being held back by her times and they are all looking for a life beyond the one handed to them.

The Divine Mrs S is at the Hampstead Theatre until 27 April with tickets from £35. Follow this site on Twitter @culturalcap1 or Facebook Cultural Capital Theatre Blog