The first play by actor Sheila Atim, of Girl From the North Country fame (for which she won an Olivier), has an enticing starting point that could be summed up as: what would happen if Cleopatra appeared on Desert Island Discs and sang her own hits?
Virologist Dr Kate Williams (Janet Kumah) is recording her podcast about women in science, and her guest is Cleopatra (Paksie Vernon), once Pharaoh of Egypt but now resident in A’aru, the afterlife — “It’s not what I expected.”
Between singing her haunting and passionate songs, Cleopatra is here to talk about her innovations, such as using crocodile dung for building and the medicinal use of sour donkey’s milk, but Williams keeps asking questions framed in terms of Mark Antony and Julius Caesar.
The aloof Cleopatra takes offence and soon they are in heated debate about what feminism really is, how women are written out of history, and the power of misrepresentation (the queen scoffs at the idea she died from an asp bite).
There’s some clumsy exposition in Lucy Jane Atkinson’s tight production as sound engineer David (Peter Losasso) fills Cleopatra in on Williams’ troubled professional history. But this is a quirky and promising debut.
Until Aug 26 (tickets. edfringe.com)
