A fast paced, cheeky, period backstage farce, The Astonishing Adventures of Kitty and Peg has been created by writer-performer team, (Sophia) Trott and (Cara) Jennings to celebrate the remarkable story of Kitty Clive and Peg Woffington, the top female entertainers of their day, the 1740s.
When England’s favourite singer (Kitty), and Ireland’s favourite legs (Peg), join forces to save their careers, they throw all their ideas at it: wrestling each other, accidental poisoning, and shouting media sound bites, and risking deportation and death, in their quest for infamy.
Think Upstart Crow, Austentatious, or the Play That Goes Wrong...
Here, Sophia and Cara take a moment to field our enquiries.
Poisoning, public feuds, fake news, female wrestling, sex, death and strike action – what was it that drew you to the stories of Kitty Clive and Peg Woffington?
All those themes are very ‘now’, but it was the characters rather than the themes that hooked us at first. We loved that Kitty Clive and Peg Woffington were women of action, who spoke up for themselves and weren’t bound by being proper. Often, when we read about women from the past, their stories seem bound up in the actions of the men in their lives, whether that’s their husbands or fathers. That wasn’t the case for these two.
Also, we wanted the chance to be anarchic on stage in cool clothes. Here lay an opportunity for us to pretend to fight and get off with each other in public. The early Georgian time was more sexually liberated, violent and gouty. Corsets weren’t too tight. It wasn’t the end of the world if you dropped a sprog out of wedlock, or didn’t want to eat fruit.
For those who might not be familiar with these fierce and feisty Restoration ladies, the riot grrls of their age, tell us a bit more about them?
The story goes that Kitty Clive was a servant, whose voice was discovered when she was scrubbing the front step of the house. We don’t know if that’s true or not. We do know that she became the nation’s favourite singer, as famous and national treasure-ey as someone like Adele in her prime. In the 1740s, Kitty reinvented herself, and changed from serious singer to a comedienne, lampooning her younger self, and continuing to perform with great success throughout a long career. She was the first person to sing Rule Britannia and sang in Handel’s Messiah. She wrote plays, and campaigned for equal pay, including striking. She was known to be a forceful personality, who used the press to her advantage, making sure that she projected an image that would keep her public interested.
Peg Woffington was from Dublin. She grew up in poverty, and became a touring child actor, moving to London in her teens. She was famous for her ‘pants roles’ which meant that she played male parts, showing her legs in trousers rather than covering them up in long skirts. She had several lovers and set up home with a few of them, living in a menage-a-trois with the famous actor manager David Garrick and Charles Macklin. She refused to marry Garrick, seeming to prefer life as an independent woman and actress. She liked to party and became the only female member, and president, of the Beefsteak Club.
How did you set about condensing their stories into a show and what can audiences expect to see?
We knew we didn’t want to do a play that tells their whole life stories. We didn’t feel that would be especially theatrical or funny. We were interested in looking at a key extreme moment where their lives intersected and expanding it. We were looking for the funniest ways to show their situation, the dynamic between them, and things in their career and relationships we could relate to. We wanted to tell a story about the action these women take when the world is telling them they’re past their prime.
We did a whole lot of research, some of which was an extension of the work we’d done for our TV show Hendrix and Handel starring David Haig, plus made-up stuff that ‘might’ have happened, to fill in the gaps. Audiences can expect to see two people trying to deal with the sh*t life throws at them whilst they’re at work, which happens to be backstage at the theatre. They can expect to see silly costumes, slapstick violence, the vanity of actors, pest control, and love between ‘frenemies’.
Showbiz rivalry is clearly nothing new, were any contemporary celebrity feuds channelled in the making of this show?
Absolutely. We were inspired by famous feuds throughout history to the present day: Bette Davis and Joan Crawford (brilliantly played with in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, and in Feud), Wagatha Christie (Rebekah Vardy and Coleen Rooney), Brangelina (Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt), and the novelist sisters AS Byatt and Margaret Drabble are a few that came up. We’ve also just had the release of Wicked, which is about the feud between Galinda and Elphaba, starring Ariana Grande and Cynthia Eviro.
It’s clearly a righteous, riotous, rollicking romp, but would it be overthinking it to suggest there’s also a commentary on gender politics, sexual equality and the exploitation of talent?
We never want to be preachy in the work we create, but it’s no accident that the characters we chose to put on stage are two powerful women who fight the system they’re in; and try to use it to their advantage. We don’t know how much Kitty and Peg fought for the sisterhood, but in standing up for themselves they definitely forged a path others could follow in.
What’s next for these two?
We hope they’ll be having further adventures! We’ve got a lot more Kitty and Peg stories to tell.
:: The Astonishing Adventures of Kitty and Peg plays Lighthouse on Friday 7 March. Tickets available now on The Astonishing Adventures of Kitty & Peg – Lighthouse
(NC)