Writer: Julia Thurston
Director: Lizzie Sharpe
This play about bigamy in 19th Century England gets lost in the fairly large space of the Arches Lane Theatre. There’s a sense that it would work better in a room above a pub where the audience is closer to the performers. A smaller space would also limit the numerous entrances and exits of the actors, when, instead, they could remain on stage all the time. At the moment, East of Adelaide is a little too frenetic and a little too shrill.
Based on writer Julia Thurston’s own ancestors, the 90-minute play explores the lives of the three wives of London saddler Henry Bottle. He marries his first wife, the older Elizabeth, for her dowry, but when her father discovers that he has deserted the army, the money is never paid. Henry has debts too, and to escape his creditors, he and his wife, along with their two young sons, move from Shoreditch to Blackheath and then to Greenwich. When his money runs out, he sends his wife and sons to Kent to live with his parents.
Henry, however, stays in London, and it’s here where he meets his next two wives, Emily and Eleanor. It’s signalled at the start of the play that he ends up in Australia with the third one, which rather spoils the narrative. Real newspaper articles are read out about court cases in Adelaide, detailing domestic abuse. With the story’s end revealed so early, Thurston’s play is more interested in how Henry manages to deceive the three women into becoming his wives.
With his slicked-back hair, Stephen Smith cuts a dashing figure on stage. His Henry is charismatic, but he preys on women who see in him a chance to escape their already-written futures. He takes advantage of the lack of agency women had at the time, and his Victorian male pride determines his belief that wives shouldn’t work and that they are, essentially, property. Once married, his wives have no choice but to obey his commands.
Although the three actors playing Henry’s wives are fairly well delineated, they are, at the same time, too similarly portrayed. Of course, this indicates the dire situation of women at the time, but it makes the play repetitive as we see Henry charm his way into another woman’s bed. To try to give the women more independence, Thurston inserts an alternative ending that is different to the outcome of her research.
Thurston plays Eleanor, the third wife, whom he encourages to emigrate to Australia, while Aimee Hislop is Elizabeth, the first wife. Playing Emily, the wife in between, is Charlie Hansen. The acting is uncomfortably caught between Victorian melodrama and naturalism.
East of Adelaide is a brave attempt at reclaiming three women’s lives from history, but as theatre, it’s frustrating. The frequent jumps back and forward in time, the repetitions, and the constant entering and exiting are distracting and make for a long evening.
Runs until 6 December 2025
