Jade Kennedy as Frida Kahlo in Fantastically Great Women Who Changed the World at Theatre Royal Stratford East
(Picture: Pamela Raith)Poor old Frida Kahlo. First her monobrowed mug was used to decorate innumerable fridge magnets, t-shirts and novelty socks. Then the creators of this new family musical about feminist role models made her skip across the stage, singing a song about the power of living in A World of Colour. On paper, it sounds cheesy. But somehow, the dream team behind the show have managed to turn the commercialised business of heroine-worship into something that’s both nuanced and unapologetically joyful.
Amelia Earhart, Marie Curie and Mary Seacole all make an appearance, just as they do in the non-fiction picture book by Kate Pankhurst that inspired this show. But here, instead of being historically accurate representations, they’re larger-than-life characters who dance through the imagination of 11-year-old Jade (an endlessly perky Kudzai Mangombe), weighing in on her pre-teen dilemmas. She’s fed up of being ignored, shushed and left behind. But then she stumbles upon the Gallery of Greatness in a local museum, where suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst teaches her the power of protest, and Jane Austen inspires her to write her thoughts down.
