I have a lot of time for Kate Prince, the director, choreographer, lyricist and co-composer of Sylvia. Her ZooNation dance company produced a superb show last year at Sadler’s Wells East, Ebony Scrooge (it’s being revived this Christmas). She also choreographed an excellent Carousel ballet at Regent’s Park in 2025, and to be honest the dance elements in this show are the best thing in it. The company dance their tootsies off to almost three hours of hip-hop, fun and soul.
Sylvia is a show about the Suffragette movement in the early part of the last century. It centres on the Pankhursts, the prominent British family known for leading the militant campaign for women’s suffrage through the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), and on their conflicted relationship with politicians of the day, Winston Churchill, Lloyd George, Asquith and Labour politician Keir Hardie. It also explores their clashes with each other as they try to pursue different strategies to obtain votes for women.
The template for the show is clearly Hamilton but it does not have the style, the articulation in the text nor the interesting musical variations to be found in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s iconic work. There is certainly mileage, as in Hamilton, in reimagining a familiar chapter of British history through a contemporary cultural and musical lens. Here, as in Hamilton, that history is viewed through a contemporary cultural and musical lens. It is the oppressed (or perhaps in this case it should be the suppressed) appropriating the oppressor. It worked powerfully in Hamilton, but much less so here.
This is a show that really wants to be loved and I wish I could be more generous towards it, if for no other reason than for the sake of the hardworking company. But the material does not match the quality of the production. The lyrics are lazy, the music by Josh Cohen and DJ Walde repetitive and the book, co-authored by Prince, lacking in the provision of characters with any real substance. Apart from Beverley Knight as Emmeline Pankhurst, Sylvia’s mother and the matron of the family, the other characters are interchangeable ciphers. Churchill (Castell Parker) is played for laughs as a bit of a ninny, bullied by both his wife and his mother, in the manner of Hamilton‘s George III, but without the wit or the song. Firebrand Keir Hardie (Tachia Newell) is played as a rather boring wimp. But then this show is not about the men. It is about strong women and is at its best when they perform as an ensemble, moving, singing and dancing stridently in support of their cause, in numbers such as ‘Suffrajitsu’ and ‘March Women March’.
There are some quieter moments but all they do is slow the narrative down. One such moment, however, does hit the mark: ‘Sylvia, Sylvio’, sung rather affectingly by Ivano Turko, in love with Sylvia. There are other half-hearted attempts to portray romantic relationships but they don’t strike true in the material offered.
As one undistinguished number followed another indistinguishable number, with little variation in time signature or chords, the score, in which even the book was underscored, is relentless and repetitive. After almost three hours (including interval) I was practically on the verge of surrendering. That said, the excellent six-piece band under the direction of Sean Green on keys drove the score powerfully forward.
This show has evolved over the past eight years and has previously played the West End, earning Beverley Knight an Olivier Award. Whenever she is on the stage she commands it in voice and personality. The titular lead, Sylvia, on the other hand, as portrayed by Naomi Katiyo, does not really make much of an impact, falling under Knight’s shadow.
Despite my reservations about the underlying material, I have nothing but praise for the production. Prince’s expressive, story-driven choreography, by weaving hip-hop and commercial street dance forms into theatrical narratives and putting street styles at the heart of her stage storytelling, captures the physical and psychological weight of the uphill battle the suffragettes faced and the bodily perseverance of the protest. The ensemble sequences feature women being bullied, blocked and assaulted but rising again and again.
There are some arresting stage images, not least the famous incident at the Epsom Derby in which Emily Wilding Davison died after being struck by King George V’s horse when she jumped the rail and attempted to grab the bridle to attach a “Votes for Women” scarf or flag.
The design (by Ben Stones) is eye-catching in its costuming and the vibrant, ever-changing videography and animations (Andrzej Goulding), presented in a signature black-and-white palette with occasional splashes of red and supported by an excellent lighting plot.
In summary, the show is worthy, but too long, and despite the excellence of many aspects of the production, the lack of real class in the material defeats the noble efforts of the company and, indeed, Prince as choreographer, to strike home with a work of real power.
Listings and ticket information can be found here
