Elizabeth Thompson was once such a famous artist that a police officer had to be stationed at the Royal Academy, where her work was displayed for the Summer Exhibition of 1874, in order to keep fans at bay. She brushed up against a male-dominated Royal Academy to which she came within two votes of being elected.
Her story is dramatised in this rollicking piece of gig theatre, written by Ellen Brammar with music by Rachel Barnes. Emer Dineen’s Elizabeth enters in a cerise dress, looking like a 19th-century debutante and behaving like a 21st-century enfant terrible, complete with pole dancer moves.
