Bird Grove – Hampstead Theatre, London

Writer: Alexi Kaye Campbell

Director: Anna Ledwich

 Alexi Kaye Campbell’s Bird Grove, in its world premiere at Hampstead Theatre, is a traditional play, a straightforward dramatisation of a period in the life of George Eliot, long before she became a writer.  As Mary Ann Evans, she’s living with her widowed father in their house, Bird Grove, in Coventry. The central episode concerns Eliot’s realisation that she can no longer accompany her father to church. Her friendship with her free-thinking friends, Charles and Cara Bray, has led her to question conventional beliefs. Over a semi-comic breakfast,  with her former teacher Miss Lewis constantly trying to divert the conversation, she tells her father her decision.

This was undoubtedly momentous for Eliot, its consequences far-reaching. But does it provide Campbell with enough drama for a play that runs for well over two hours?

The opening scene works as a sort of Jane Austen-esque period comedy. Campbell invents the character Horace Garfield, a potential suitor to the 20-something Mary Ann. Jonnie Broadbent brings out his appealing daft character. He’s an overblown Mr Collins, intent on bagging himself a bride, and like Mr Collins, he has no expectation of rejection. Kitted out like Mr Toad, in strangely fashion-forward spats, he’s eager to secure Mary Ann’s hand to please his dying father. Garfield père has been dying for some seven years – shades here of Oscar Wilde – Campbell gives the dialogue some self-consciously Wildean archness. There’s the matter of Garfield’s father’s will, too, with some slender plot about Horace being cut out unless he produces offspring. There’s also some droll stuff about his having eaten dodgy venison and having to constantly repair to the outside privy.

First of all, it’s hard to believe the elegant Bird Grove has no indoor plumbing. More significantly, it’s hard to believe that the pretty, lively Mary Ann, engagingly played by Elizabeth Dulau, will lack for suitors. The sparky lines Campbell gives her are more Elizabeth Bennet than the shy, awkward, notorious plain young woman Eliot then was.

Owen Teale as Robert Evans, her father, has to shift from twinkly paterfamilias delivering Mr Bennet-like zingers, to austere patriarch, banishing his daughter from the house for her apostasy. Anyone who’s read The Mill on the Floss will know about Eliot’s complex relationship with her adored brother Isaac. Here, Isaac’s one-dimensional characterisation gives Jolyon Coy little to work with.

Tom Espiner and Rebecca Scroggs play the vibrant Brays, whose cultural and social milieu has brought about Eliot’s intellectual awakening. There is much potted discussion of Geology, Theology, Social and Gender Issues. But without a Tom Stoppard to alchemise these, they remain flat. Cara is much given to twenty-first-century cliché: ‘The stories that shape our lives … shape the world’, and Mary Ann has to react as if she’s never before considered such wisdom.

The latter half of the play revolves around Robert Evans’ will. Campbell follows the facts: Evans spitefully excludes Mary Ann from his considerable property and wealth, right down to bequeathing his library to her sibling. Here Campbell shows us Mary Ann chucking a few books around in frustration, but soon gives her the insight that the will liberates her.

The final moments of the play, where a new character appears to foretell Mary Ann’s glittering future is an egregious mistake.

It’s a handsome production with a tasteful set by Sarah Beaton that recalls the melancholy interiors of Vilhelm Hammershøi and includes the lovely sight of snow falling from a vast window. There is appealing music and sound design by Harry Blake and Clara Pople. It’s all tightly directed by Anna Ledwich.

 Runs until 21 March 2026