There’s nothing so delicious to conspiracy theorists as solving an unsolved and unsolvable real-life puzzle. What makes the identity of Jack the Ripper such fertile ground for the many theorists who have written about it? It’s because we all know that there is likely never to be a definitive answer. Was it Aaron Kosminski, a lowly Polish-Jewish hairdresser living in Whitechapel who was later committed to a lunatic asylum, or Queen Victoria’s grandson and heir presumptive to the throne, Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale? Or any of the other remaining 29 suspects?
And talking about royalty, The Anastasia File, the 1978 play by the late Royce Ryton, is one of a lengthy line of artistic endeavours dealing with what was, once at least, one of history’s most intriguing mysteries. Ryton was a flamboyant British actor and traditionalist dramatist, famed for the hit West End play Crown Matrimonial about the abdication of King Edward VIII, and a number of other historical plays.
Did the Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia, the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II, die along with her family in 1918 when they were imprisoned and murdered by the revolutionary Bolsheviks, or did she survive and turn up, as Anna Manahan (or Anderson), in 1920, trying to commit suicide in a canal in Berlin and then committed to an asylum? The story has been told many times, as a play, movie, animation, musical and even as a ballet.
Regrettably, for conspiracy theorists, in 1994, almost twenty years after the first production of Ryton’s play, mitochondrial DNA testing on preserved hospital tissue from Anderson, compared with matched samples from living relatives (including Prince Philip, the late Duke of Edinburgh), showed her DNA did not match the Romanov family. So the puzzle was solved.
That doesn’t disqualify audiences from enjoying imaginative projects reflecting this former mystery, and The Anastasia File, in that regard, provides a perfectly respectable and diverting evening. Ryton’s piece is a play for four actors, two of whom (Ashley D. Gayle and Rosie Thompson) play an assortment of characters including the purported Anastasia’s royal relations, medics, nurses and others. The two principal performers play Anastasia (Jenny Seagrove) and a police inspector and his own son (Simon Shepherd) trying to solve the mystery over a period of more than 60 years.
The show is very wordy, though it does clearly describe the historical context and who’s who in the hierarchy of the Romanoff family, many of whom escaped Russia and sought refuge in Europe and America.
The text tries to leverage, against the historical background, some truths about the quest for identity and the exploitation of celebrity as Anna is caught in a net between shady lawyers and money-hungry relatives all seeking a share of a fortune lodged with the Bank of England by the Tsar before his murder. Can Anna ever prove her assumed identity?
Seagrove gives a sensitive, if less than charismatic, performance as Anna, both as a young woman and as her elderly self, being turned inside out with questions to authenticate her persona. She is sometimes mute, sometimes angry, frustrated and histrionic. It is a very capable lead performance. Likewise, Shepherd provides a likeable and empathetic performance as the Inspector, who comes to believe Anna and takes her under his wing.
Gayle and Thompson frantically hop on and off the stage, like good’uns, in countless costume changes, to cover the various other characters in the story.
If I am honest, I thought the utilitarian setting (by Dan Samson), with its brutalist concrete walls, presumably representing an insane asylum, was somewhat dreary and likewise the costuming. I didn’t expect Hello, Dolly! but some colour would have been nice. And I am unclear, as the play progresses through the decades, why Anna is constantly dressed in a nightdress and is barefoot.
In summary, and despite the melting away of the mystery underpinning it, this is a well thought out play, in many ways more a history lesson than a drama, carefully written and well played though, in style, a little dated and at times, under Roy Marsden’s direction, somewhat static, but it is a pleasant enough evening out at the theatre that doesn’t tax the senses.
Listings and ticket information can be found here
