Sylvia – Curve Theatre, Leicester

Book: Kate Prince and Priya Parmar

Music: Josh Cohen and DJ Walde

Lyrics: Kate Prince

Director: Kate Prince

Sylvia Pankhurst is not, for most audiences, a name that sits alongside her mother Emmeline or Emily Davison in the popular memory of the suffrage movement. Where the WSPU’s leadership pursued votes for women through escalating confrontation, Sylvia grew increasingly dissatisfied with both the violence and the narrowness of the cause. She left Manchester for London’s East End, broke from her family’s organisation, and turned her energies towards the working women and men the wider movement had left behind. That split — between a fight for the vote and a fight for the people the vote was supposed to serve — is the engine of Sylvia, direct from a sold-out run at the Old Vic and now beginning its first UK tour at the Curve.

There is a local frame worth noting, too. Sylvia herself spent time in Leicester in 1907, recording the city’s shoe workers, and the story of Alice Hawkins — a local machinist and suffragette in her own right — runs in parallel through the city’s history. It gives this opening tour date a resonance that the later stops will not quite share.

Kate Prince’s production, with a book she has written with Priya Parmar, does not so much tell this story as perform it. The choreography, also by Prince, carries the narrative as much as the dialogue does — this is a dance-driven musical, not a play with songs bolted on, and the hip hop, funk and soul score by Josh Cohen and DJ Walde feels exactly right for it. Prince has spoken of a non-linear process, sometimes building from lyrics, sometimes from a dance style that then dictates the music, and the result is a show where movement expresses argument as clearly as any line spoken aloud.

Ben Stones’s design is spare and effective, with platforms and step units doubling as seating, soapboxes and tables, all rendered in silvery charcoal grey, with Natasha Chivers and Hector Murray’s lighting doing the work of mood and focus that the set deliberately withholds. It suits a show never stops moving, with unbroken momentum fitting a story that doesn’t pause for reflection, even as its central figure is pulled in several directions at once. The costumes begin in black, white and grey, punctuated initially only by Keir Hardie’s flashes of red, before the East End community appears in pink — a hint, deliberately or not, of the socialism Sylvia is moving towards.

Beverley Knight, reprising the role that won her an Olivier Award at the Old Vic, remains a formidable Emmeline Pankhurst — a matriarch who knows exactly what she wants and has no patience for negotiation. Every lyric can be heard and understood, which is not always true of musical theatre generally and is worth noting here. But the production belongs to Naomi Katiyo’s Sylvia. Katiyo brings real passion and a strong voice to a role that has to carry both political conviction and personal cost, and while she may not quite match Knight for sheer stage command, few would. She moves comfortably between the score’s different needs — as suited to an uptempo funk number as she is to a ballad — and that vocal range, paired with dancing that is equally assured, and believable acting skills, mark her out as a name worth watching well beyond this run.

A lot of the strength of this production lies beyond the headline names though, and with the ensemble. Ellena Vincent gives Christabel a loyal, strong-voiced conviction, while Kirstie Skivington’s Adela carries the quieter disappointment of a sister driven away from the family cause. Tachia Newall is excellent as Keir Hardie, walking a careful line between his sympathy for the suffragettes and his need to protect Labour’s wider support, with an affection for Sylvia that clearly runs deeper than politics. Collette Guitart makes a strong impression in dual roles, bringing a polite but firm determination to Clementine Churchill and a distinctly different energy to Julia Scurr — one performer, two entirely separate people. There are many more names worth crediting in what is, throughout, a genuine ensemble piece rather than a star vehicle propped up by supporting turns.

Sylvia is not a cautious retelling of familiar history. It takes a figure who has been comparatively overlooked and makes the case, loudly and skilfully, for why she matters — to the suffrage story, and to the working communities whose lives she spent her energy trying to improve.

This is a slick and assured start to a short UK tour that surely will have life beyond its final stop in November.

Runs until 3 October 2026 and on tour