Suffragette city Sylvia Pankhurst gets a hip-hop portrayal
Alice Vincent meets the makers of ‘Sylvia’, the new British musical about Emmeline Pankhurst’s more radical daughter
There’s a knock on the door, and actress Izuka Hoyle is ushered in. She’s wearing her costume for the first time: a floorlength, tailored Edwardian gown that has three subtle Adidas stripes running down the skirt in black velvet. “Are you comfy enough?” asks impressed director Kate Prince. Hoyle is positive: “It’s going to be a dream.” She’s referring to the vigorous street dancing that she and her 15 castmates will have to perform in stiff cuffs and collars for Sylvia, a new musical about the battle for women’s suffrage with a hip-hop twist – one that would have been incongruous until a certain other historical musical came along.
The timing is certainly pertinent. Even if Prince, who has co-written, choreographed and directed Sylvia, hadn’t halted another production to get it hastily staged during the centenary year of women getting the vote, 2018 would still have been awash with discussions about women’s rights: from #Metoo and Time’s Up to Ireland’s legalising of abortion, women’s bodies and the politics they hold have made headlines daily.
But Sylvia also arrives into a theatrical landscape dominated by
Hamilton, the US musical behemoth about the founding father Alexander Hamilton that transferred from Broadway to the West End last November. Like Lin Manuel Miranda’s creation, Sylvia reconfigures a white historical tale with hip hop and a diverse cast, telling the story of Sylvia Pankhurst, the more radical daughter of the Suffragettes founder Emmeline. It’s inevitable that comparisons will be made.
Sylvia may have been whipped up in less than a year, but it is the sixth full-scale production Prince has made with her company Zoonation – and all have been inspired by hip-hop culture. But this is the most high profile yet.
“[Previously] there’s been stigma,” says Prince, of the idea of making a commercial hip-hop theatre show. But now the success of the Tony awardwinner should allow her shows bigger stages: “Hamilton could do the world of good to this idea of what hip hop is.”
Back in the rehearsal room, the cast are back in sportswear. In one part, members work on breakdancing and one-on-one combat scenes. Zoonation originated as a dance company, and Sylvia’s key moments – such as Black Friday, the demonstration in 1910 where, for six hours, 300 women were assaulted by police, physically and sometimes sexually, outside the Houses of Parliament – have been imagined in the language of moving bodies.
In another part of the room, Prince oversees the rehearsal of a scene in which Sylvia, played by Genesis Lynea, is force-fed by doctors. Her defiance comes in a half-rapped song in which she urges herself to stay strong. This grim sequence is based on evidence from Sylvia, who smuggled a letter out of prison detailing gruelling details of the torture. “Everything we do is based on what people said and did,” Prince says.
Prince has co-written the script with historical novelist Priya Parmar. They chose to focus specifically on Sylvia because “there’s no way, in one show, to do justice to what the Suffragettes did. Sylvia’s is one of the more interesting stories,” says Prince.
“She hasn’t been recognised nearly as much as her family,” adds Parmar.
Sylvia was Emmeline’s second daughter and her ambitions extended further than her mother’s: she was determined that all women get the vote, rather than just middle-class ones, which drove an ideological wedge between Sylvia and her family. It is this tension that motors the production along. Prince was inspired after witnessing the impact the Scottish and EU referendums had on families across the country: “The whole thing is what happens when a family is divided by something we are all so passionate about,” she says. Another divided family Sylvia portrays is that of Winston Churchill, the then home secretary: “His mother was really anti-suffrage and his wife was hugely pro-suffrage. So we imagined domestic situations where he is caught between the two.”
“I was quite amazed that I didn’t know her story,” says Lynea of Sylvia. “She was gangster! I am so upset that this was not taught.” The character has reunited Lynea and Beverley Knight as onstage mother and daughter after the pair worked together in The Bodyguard.
The fact that both are black has already caused something of a social media skirmish, with Knight forced to defend her casting by pointing out how many white people had played characters of colour throughout the decades. “It’s a complete mirror, isn’t it?” Lynea says, referring to how she thinks the race controversy reflects the marginalisation of certain groups that Sylvia deals with. “Even 100 years on, there are still issues there – and it shouldn’t be an issue.”
For Knight, the upset is “really boring”. “This is art,” she points out. “We are not creating a biopic. The last time I checked, [the Pankhursts] didn’t sing or dance their way through the women’s movement.”
The fact that hip-hop culture is rooted in oppression make it an obvious choice for Sylvia’s story, Prince explains. “It’s all about revolution,” she says, “and [it] seems particularly right for Suffragettes.” The soundtrack is a cacophonous mix that also picks up reggae, soul, disco and R’N’B; but interestingly, the music is distinctly British, with numbers much more rough and ready than Hamilton’s glossily produced songs. “It sounds like a party,” Lynea says. “The music is so raw. It’s not been tamed.” Prince hopes the show will empower women to speak up. Parmar wants people to understand what these women went through so that they could vote. But the show demonstrates that there are still boundaries to be pushed as to what is acceptable on stage.
“If this sets off a spark that helps British theatre to evolve and bring in new faces and ideas, then we’ll have done our jobs,” says Knight. “That would be so exciting.”
Sylvia is at the Old Vic from Sept 1-22 (tickets. telegraph.co.uk/londontheatre/musicals/sylvia or 0844 871 2118)
‘The last time I checked, the Pankhursts didn’t sing or dance their way through the women’s movement’