Category: VAULT Festival

Princess Essex and HEADCASE prove two contrasting and enjoyable entries of the Essex on Stage festival at the Bush Theatre

“I’m much more likely to engage in a fantasy than reality”

Originally planned for the VAULT Festival, Essex on Stage – platforming Essex and Outer East London writers – has found a new home at the Bush Theatre’s studio. First up in a double bill for me was Anne Odeke’s Princess Essex, fresh from its own tour of Essex community venues. It’s an adventurous one-woman show that riffs on the story of the first black woman to enter a beauty pageant in the UK and tries to fit a whole lot more besides.  

The tale of Senegalese Princess Dinubolu, especially as rewritten here as an alias for enterprising Southend woman Joanna, is engaging and highly entertaining in Odeke’s hands. And you almost wish she’d focused on that alone, as the framing device of a contemporary schoolgirl giving a presentation on the princess weighs the show down a little with its mechanism of fact delivery. That said, there’s some truly arresting information in here – you just want it to be integrated in a different way to allow more focus on Joanna. Continue reading “Review: Princess Essex / HEADCASE, Bush Theatre”