It was quite a life. Having escaped a violent and heavy-drinking father, Mary Wollstonecraft ploughed a singular path. Avowedly independent and radical in thought, she dazzled and discombobulated a crusty male establishment with her intellect. She turned from governess to author and landed a reporting job in revolutionary France. Among her works, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is a foundational feminist text. After that, giving birth to Mary Shelley seems like a postscript.
Maureen Lennon’s patchwork tribute for Hull Truck and Pilot theatre is a musical collage of fast-paced scenes designed to memorialise a pioneer of sexual equality. As Lennon has it, this is a woman who demands parity with men, radicalises children and refuses to be shouted down. The play is “told for all women who find themselves howling at the world”.
