Wilton’s Music Hall is the setting for Joy Wilkinson’s play, The Sweet Science of Bruising. This fabulous Grade 2 listed building brings an old worldly appeal that really suits the Victorian time this play is set in. The year is 1869. The place, London.
Based on historical research into 19th-century women’s boxing the play examines the lives of four women. It demonstrates how women were controlled by men and restricted to certain roles and dress (the corset) at that time.
We meet the four female protagonists; Matty, a feisty Irish lady of the night (Jessica Regan), Violet, a nurse that really wants to be a doctor (Celeste Dodwell), Anna Lamb, an upper-middle-class lady (played by Emma McDonald) with an abusive husband Gabriel (Wilf Scolding) and a northern lass (Fiona Skinner) who was found abandoned as a baby. Constrained by their roles in life they each are drawn into the dark world of boxing by the eccentric Professor Sharp (Owen Brenman). Sharp hides his own dark secret. He is gay at a time where homosexuality was illegal.
The women who have the limited choice in life of marriage, nursing, service or prostitution find the liberty they crave in the boxing ring.
In a week where Irish Minister for Sport, Shane Ross was blasted on social media for photobombing boxing champion Katie Taylor’s homecoming at Dublin Airport, this play seems rather apt.
On a more serious note, this play asks us to question, are we going back in time, what with the Trump administration taking away women’s rights, the rise in hate crime, for example, a lesbian couple being beaten up on a London bus because they refused to perform for a group of thugs.
It also raises the question, are women supporting each other enough? I have never understood how these type of contact ‘sports’ are really a sport. How do women gain emancipation through beating each other up?
The Sweet Science of Bruising runs from 5th June to 29th June at Wilton’s Music Hall, 1 Graces Alley, Whitechapel, London E1 8JB.
