Brighton Fringe 2025
Talking To Margery
Zoë Alexander and Company
Genre: Biographical Drama, character comedy, Comedy, Drama, Theatre
Venue: BN1 Arts Centre. Brighton BN1 4GW
Festival: Brighton Fringe
Low Down
“What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of different epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”
Carl Sagan ‘Cosmos’ 1980
Review
Carl Sagan would have loved ‘Talking To Margery’. It features a Catholic woman from the fifteenth century, who wrote a book about her life – her domestic problems and journeys, as well as her mystical visions and her communion with God. Actually, Margery Kempe herself couldn’t read or write – she had a ‘scribe’ write up her words in a bound manuscript (this was before the advent of printing), and the book itself was lost for hundreds of years, only rediscovered by chance in 1934 But the book survived, and Margery talks to us today as we read the words she set down all those centuries ago.
She talked to Zoë Alexander, too; who became fascinated by Margery, and who’s brought the woman to life for us, in another medium – theatre. The production developed out of explorative workshops earlier this year, to become the story we saw. Margery Kempe brought to life – but larger than life, on the BN1 stage !
Because ‘The Book Of Margery Kempe’ is considered by some to be the first autobiography in the English language, she’s studied on modern University courses, and as the play opened we saw twenty year old Grace slumped over her laptop late at night, trying (unsuccessfully) to complete an essay on the woman. She’s in her student room – sketched in for us by just the desk and a single bed, with moonlight filtering through filmy plastic strips hanging in front of the window.
And then the light changed, and there was a sound of anguished weeping, and pushing through the translucent strips into the room was … Margery Kempe.
Wow ! All in white, her robes topped off with a head-covering that completely surrounded her features and sported two great cones pointing heavenwards – the only visible flesh was the oval of her face, and her hands. Those hands – Denise Evans kept them constantly in motion; praising God’s mercy, and raising them in veneration. Loud of voice and extravagant of gesture, she dominated the stage from the first moment she came on. When Grace pointed the desk lamp at her – a technology far beyond the medieval woman’s imagining – Margery was terrified: she brought the hands together to protect herself as she exclaimed “It’s The Lord’s will that I’m here !”
Billie Early’s Grace is stunned by this sudden appearance in her room – but Margery’s equally thrown. She can’t make head or tail of Grace: is this young woman married, or unwed? Why is she living alone in some sort of monastic cell; is she an Anchoress? When Grace tells her visitor that she’s a student, at Uni, Margery can’t believe what she’s hearing – “a Woman: at a University !!! “ She finds it almost beyond belief.
Grace explained that she’s actually studying Margery Kempe, so Margery introduced her ‘scribe’. Jamie Izzet was dressed as a monk, in a brown habit with his reddish hair tied back in a bun. He sported a large white feathered quill, writing flamboyantly on sheets of parchment.
Izzet hardly ever speaks – almost all his communication was done physically, by wonderfully expressive facial expressions and body language. Often, when Margery made some point, the Scribe would act it out in something approaching mime. I’d seen him a few days earlier, as a mysterious New Yorker in a show titled ‘Tip Of Your Tongue’ – along with Zoë Alexander herself. He rarely spoke in that role either, but the result – in both – was more eloquent than a lot of speaking actors I’ve seen.
Very accomplished writing. ‘Talking To Margery’ is very much a comedy, as well as an examination of faith; and a lot of the gags were based on the changes in technology – and social interaction – over the centuries. Margery and her Scribe are fascinated by Grace’s laptop, and especially her phone. It doesn’t take them long to realise that Tinder exists as a means for Grace to meet – Suitors … The Scribe was busily swiping left when he suddenly leaped away in horror …
The poor man had jumped six centuries, and just experienced his first dick-pic.
Perhaps the biggest gulf in understanding, though, was that Margery could not fathom Grace’s lack of belief in God. Although she wasn’t actually a nun in holy orders, she had constant visions of the Divine, and felt that her very public (and very loud) weeping could turn people away from the wiles of the Devil. Margery had travelled extensively: had been on pilgrimages to Spain, Jerusalem and other important religious sites. (responding to this, Grace mentioned that she, too, had been to Spain. “Santiago de Compostela?” asked Margery. “No, Malaga”, the girl replied)
Obviously the lack of faith is a largely Western, twentieth century phenomenon, but that doesn’t mean that people feel completely in control of their lives. The play’s set during the Covid pandemic, and Grace’s own father is in hospital, lungs kept functioning on a ventilator, while the young woman is isolated, far from her family, in her university room. She’s finding it difficult to make sense of her existence – something that Margery, for all her trials and tribulations, never suffered. Margery had a sense of divine order in the Universe, and a hope of another life after this one.
I won’t spoil your future enjoyment by giving away the ending (though it involved a wonderful gift from Grace to Margery) – but this is probably the place to mention Alice Brightman’s perfectly chosen harp playing. The music – her own compositions – opened the performance, and provided a kind of medieval ‘texture’ throughout. The harp is beautiful in itself, but under Brightman’s fingers it could also sound like a lute – an ideal accompaniment to a fifteenth century visitation.
If it was indeed a ‘visitation’. The whole episode was so surreal that it might well have been a dream, or an hallucination brought on by Grace’s exhaustion and worries. Zoë Alexander’s creation allowed for multiple possibilities. I’m still trying to decide which of them I believe I saw.
Still thinking about a performance days later – Isn’t that the very definition of great theatre?
