Written and co-directed (with Isla Jackson-Ritchie) by Lois Tallulah, In the Shadow of Her Majesty is set in a flat opposite Her Majesty’s Prison. This all-female production depicts the life of an all-female family during the pandemic Christmas of 2020, attempting to tackle issues such as the prison system, marital rape, and child abuse.
Nicole Dinucci’s set design features the family’s festive living room with a kitchen where the oven is used as a wine cellar. The set is reminiscent of a sitcom Christmas special. Indeed, the play at times feels like a darker version of a Miranda or Only Fools and Horses Christmas episode, with all the men gone.
Initially, Doreen’s (Alice Selewyn) husband Nikki is set to be released in two years, but due to the pandemic, he will be released earlier. While Doreen is unhappy about the news, her daughter Jorja (Ella Harding) eagerly awaits her father’s call. Meanwhile, Doreen’s other two daughters have their own businesses: Riley (Lois Tallulah), whose child’s father is also incarcerated, and Gemma (Nancy Brabin-Platt), the stoic, cynical football fan who appears the least concerned about the men in their lives. A simmering but predictable twist involving Jorja and Riley is revealed late in the play, adding tension to an already fraught domestic drama.
Gemma, the family’s outlier, is portrayed as a sharp contrast to the others. While the rest support Arsenal, Gemma supports Hotspur. As the only family member seemingly unbothered by the men in prison, Gemma somewhat becomes an “alternative to men”, shouldering some of the “men’s responsibilities” as everyone starts to count on her. Their aunt Trish (Jennifer Joseph), who lives a relatively wealthy life, always loves them all dearly. She offers a much-needed (and well-devised) voice of encouragement to the women in the house, urging them to unite and support each other in those hard times.
Over 70 minutes, In the Shadow of Her Majesty successfully brings these personalities to life. Fifi Bechler’s lighting design switches between warm, festive yellow tones and a cold dim blue tone mirroring their psychological horrors, contrasting with the festive pop songs played as soundscape.
With many droll jokes presenting the life of a northern London working class family, the play isn’t pessimistic or gloomy at all. This resonates with the key message given in Tallulah’s prologue that laughter is the coping mechanism of these women in order to carry on. In fact, the whole play is a palette displaying these women’s coping mechanisms: Doreen’s alcoholism, Riley’s over-worrying, Gemma’s escapism, and Jorja’s attempt to seek love, attention and validation through sexting.
But, is coping itself enough? The play’s reflection on the prison system somehow feels too tentative, and the debate on whether these men deserve their sentences or if the prison should treat them more kindly remains quite tentative.
As the play is also ambitiously keen to address issues related to patriarchy, it would benefit from exploring how the fundamental logic of patriarchy perpetuates these issues. These women are forced to eat the bitter fruit twice, first by their fathers or husbands and then by a collapsing patriarchal system that victimises both them and their men. While Trish’s late-stage reminder of the significance of sisterhood makes the point, this comes too late with little grounding in the rest of the play.
The family also unexpectedly welcomes Jamila (Nadia Lamin), whose husband is in prison due to tax evasion. At the end of the play, they assist her in giving birth to her son in this living room. Jamila’s story becomes a side note to the systematic corruption, but the audience is given little idea whether the new life represents hope. To some extent, In the Shadow of Her Majesty is too dark to be a sitcom Christmas special, but too lightweight and floating as a theatrical piece claiming to be thought provoking.
