Princess Essex – Shakespeare’s Globe, London

Writer: Anne Odeke

Director: Robin Belfield

A play filled with British postcard humour, Anne Odeke’s Princess Essex comes to Shakespeare’s Globe with two landmark features; its story is about the first Black woman to enter a beauty contest in the UK, while Odeke herself is the first person of colour and contemporary artist to write and perform her own show in this theatre. A jaunty tale of the inter-seaside town rivalries, local politics and the discovery of female agency, Princess Essex imagines the story behind the real-life entry of the mysterious Princess Dinubolu into the 1908 Southend-On Sea Beauty contest.

When Maid Joanna is taken to a travelling freak show by her employer Mrs Bugle, the outrageous site of a pygmy leads her to quit her job and try to help him, quickly discovering that nothing in show business is quite what it seems. Meanwhile, the intense rivalry between Southend-on-Sea and Kent seaside resort Folkestone leads to opposing beauty contests staged within weeks of each other, inspiring Joanna to set the Edwardian entertainment world ablaze and give her Essex home a helping hand at the same time.

Blending seaside humour, music hall and a few plot points from the 1970s-set Carry on Girls – particularly the conspiracy between politics, local business and the contestant, as well as the entry of a candidate who is not what they seem – Odeke’s play is a fiery recreation of the era, channelling a very modern and crowd-pleasing spirit into the story. Driven by the twin narratives of making Southend’s premier venue, the Kursaal, the greatest one-stop entertainment venue in the world despite its dodgy financing, and seeing Joanna grow into her agency with an ability to influence how others perceive her, the story takes place in the deeply racist and exclusionary vision of Britain that Odeke creates.

The production carries a number of trigger warnings for racist and derogatory language, sexism and sexual assault which are sensitively handled within the show, and although there is an entertaining levity in Princess Essex, the play also addresses the deeply troubling nature of the society that Joanna exists within and fights against. In addition, throughout there is abominable abuse of people from Folkestone, Southend-on-Sea’s supposed great enemy, described as “them idiots across the water”, although the Kentish characters barely acknowledge Southend’s existence. (Full disclosure: this reviewer is originally from Folkestone and can vouch for this). These comic scenes are nicely managed with groups of councillors from both towns played by the same actors and given the same exaggerated caricature.

But Princess Essex does feel overstretched to fit a 2-hour and 40-minute running time. The tighter first Act following Joanna’s semi-liberation from service becomes distracted by a needless visit from the King who, like many monarchs on stage since Hamilton, is a villainous buffoon. Meanwhile, subplots involving the Mayor’s spoiled daughter Violet (a very funny Eloise Secker) and her growing attraction to working-class maid and women’s rights campaigner Harriet (Yasmin Taheri) who is rejected from the pageant goes nowhere, and even the problematic economic situation of the Kursaal run by Mr Bacon (Matthew Ashforde) is forgotten in the big empowerment ending.

Odeke’s Joanna, however, belongs on this stage, a character to root for as she defies all the restrictions of the age to stake a claim to it, and Princess Essex is far stronger when it chooses satire rather than straight drama to draw attention to the disparities of opportunity and respect afforded to Joanna and Princess Dinubolu. Evolving from an online monologue to a one-person touring show and now a full-length play in just four years, a little tightening up (and a little less cheek about Folkestone), and Princess Essex will finally get the recognition she’s waited over a century for.

Runs until26 October 2024