Writer: Billie Billington
Director: Phoebe Driver
Opening like a raucous Victorian Musical routine, the tale of The Female Husband goes further back in time to a courtroom in 1767 London where Eliza Williams is attempting to have her marriage annulled on the basis that her husband is actually a woman. Based on real-life accounts, Billie Billington’s ambitious play can’t quite untie the reasons for such a separation.
With only a cast or two, witnesses are called to the stand to give their evidence. We hear from Eliza herself who only discovered her husband’s identity when she spied him naked in the bath. For the previous seven years, she’d never had an inkling and had always been satisfied in the bedroom department.
Her husband, Henry, refutes his wife’s claims and says he’s 100% male and that the local sex-worker would be able to prove it. This fortunately seems to placate the judge and delays a physical examination. The prostitute, all eyes and legs, comes to the witness box to confirm Henry’s manliness. And after her, come Henry’s brother and Eliza’s father, all with new information for the court.
The acting by Katie Driver and Frank Bertoletti marries humour and emotion in equal measures. They don frocks and robes sometimes in a self-referential manner, demonstrating that they are acting out a story not just in Victorian times but now as well, as seen in Bertoletti’s anachronistic patterned Doctor Marten’s. Billington’s writing is clever here and the actors judge the tone perfectly.
However, the play’s last quarter runs into some trouble as the evidence at the end is contradictory. Has Eliza always known her husband was a woman? And if she is happy, then why is she trying to annul the marriage? A blackmail plot towards the end only confuses issues. There’s a feeling that Billington has run out of evidence too, that the research is inconclusive.
With this aporia, it makes sense to return to the beginning and not rewrite history too much. But the unresolved matters are frustrating rather than enlightening.
Runs until 24 August 2025
Camden Fringe runs until 25 August 2024
The Reviews Hub Score
Wedding Bells
