Outside the House of Commons stands one of the few London statues of a woman. Thomas Thornycroft’s 1902 bronze shows Boudica (always Boadicea to me), rampaging in her chariot with her two daughters. It’s one of many versions of the queen of the Iceni. She has been embraced as an imperial heroine and a fighter against male tyranny. “Mad and maddening all that heard her,” wrote Tennyson.
Tristan Bernays’s vigorous new play sees her as bloody, brave and fiercely maternal. Strongly plotted and directed with exceptional clarity by Eleanor Rhode, Boudica is an occasion for debate and action, not for nuance. After an overlong prologue (finely spoken by Anna-Maria Nabirye), Bernays’s dialogue is sturdy. There is some iambic pentameter, and some quasi-archaic inversions – “Then let us haste to this our hall” – but the sense is never strangled. And occasionally speech flashes into something really striking. “Flex your tongues like bows,” Boudica commands. Not long afterwards, she is tearing out an enemy’s tongue. The Globe suggests that this is not a drama for infant audiences. There is flogging and rape. There is also robust demotic from the Roman squaddies, who like to josh about icicles on their cocks. The pure of ear might need to know about the swearing: “You have news?” “Of course he has news. He’s a fucking messenger.”
Arguments are crisp rather than subtle. It is hard to see a play without Brexit overtones these days: Boudica’s daughters – strongly played by Joan Iyiola and Natalie Simpson – suggest something of both sides. There is a scowl at misogyny of the “if-you-can-call-her-a-woman” kind – though I wish the doughty female warriors did not end up soppily in tears. The main plea is for a laying down of arms.
Rhode’s staging has plenty of splash and dash. Soldiers abseil from the top tiers of the theatre. Forbes Masson belts out a couple of Clash numbers (not really integrated into the action, but rousing). As so often, the effects are easily matched by the Globe itself. On the afternoon before press night, the weather provided its own scenery. A curtain of sleet. A commentary on the Roman grumbling about the English climate. A joke on the woman who proclaimed the scenery “is more beautiful than I recall”. But there is real beauty on stage. Gina McKee’s Boudica, in boots and the ancient Icenic version of an Alice band, commands without seeming to try. Lethally economical: look how elegant she makes the scoop of her hand as she suggests the gouging out of a heart.
• At the Globe, London, until 1 October
