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.
She represents the consummate “selfish artist”, all too aware of her genius. But with the help of her sister and poet, Alice, played as a transgender woman by Fizz Sinclair, Elizabeth sets out to perform the nonthreatening role of the “modest” woman in hope of winning over the Royal Academicians.
Directed by Luke Skilbeck and Paul Smith, the show is staged on QianEr Jin’s lo-fi set (kitschy curtains, easels, staircases), in the vein of a knowing period drama. It has a fabulous drag king aesthetic and fringe energy, throwing in plenty of raunchiness, satire and poppy interludes.
Brammar’s script shines in its humour, especially sending up the whiskered men of the RA. “We are men,” they sing and fall into laddish pub-style chanting. The same shtick continues throughout the show and it never fails to amuse.
Each performer brings charm, and LJ Parkinson is especially winning as the head of the RA. Dineen’s voice has incredible power as does Libra Teejay’s. Teejay plays Queen Victoria as a sweary despot in fishnets, and doubles up as Bessie, a non-binary Victorian. That cast members are drag artists, with a range of pronouns, adds to the ironies around sex and gender.
The script switches between parody and bursts of earnest argument, especially in debates around the feminist activism that Alice advocates versus the sense of female exceptionalism that Elizabeth represents.
When its script falters, it is saved by stonking performances and stunning singing – so much so you wish for more song, less script. The songs are strong although Bossy Women Unite sounds like the simplistic, first-world feminism of the “lean in” variety.
Ultimately Modest throws so much in the air that it cannot tackle all that it raises but then again, the fact that it leaves us with unresolved, sometimes contradictory questions around women and power, adds to its nuance. And the show bubbles over with charisma, which wins us over.
• At Kiln theatre, London, until 15 July.
