Edinburgh Fringe 2025
Low Down
Mary’s Daughters is a production staged at the 2025 Edinburgh Fringe, presented by BiLLO Studio in collaboration with Little Lion Theatre Company. The story imagines a reunion in the afterlife between Mary Wollstonecraft, her daughter Mary Shelley, and Fanny Imlay. Framed as a feminist ghost tale, the play draws upon the unique legacies of each woman. Wollstonecraft’s pioneering work for women’s rights, Fanny Imlay’s often overlooked presence, and Mary Shelley’s lasting literary reputation. Through thoughtful dialogue, the characters explore their intertwined pasts, the complexities of motherhood, and the broader influence of their ideas. The piece is co-written by Kaya Bucholc and Will Wallace
Review
Mary’s Daughters is a feminist ghost story performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2025. It tells the story of three women: Mary Wollstonecraft, an 18th century intellectual and often cited as the mother of feminism; her daughter Fanny Imlay, who has been mostly forgotten; and Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein. The play presents their lives, writings, and the effects of their histories. These three women, reunited after death, address the emotional wounds caused by family relationships.
Written by Kaya Bucholc in collaboration with Will Wallace, the piece offers a deep insoght into the three women.
This is a meticulously researched piece of writing, blending biographical detail and speculative imagination. Wollstonecraft’s role as the mother of feminism in the 18th century provides the starting point. The narrative of the three is rooted in biography and Mary becomes something of the main focus around which the other two revolve. However, each character is given voice, and the script constructs fast moving triologues that allow for tight verbal interplay.
The production makes strong use of simple physical stage placement. The set is minimal. Papers are strewn across the stage floor, suggesting fragments and snippets of three interwoven lives and the strands that hold them together. As a visual motif, it mirrors the emotional fragmentation and historical loss each character grapples with.
The performances are uniformly strong. The three actors deliver fluently connected work, with a direct, no nonsense script that rarely misses a beat. Characters are edgy, yet sincere and mischievous. There is anger and frustration between them, as well as a shared sharpness and occasional compassion. As ghosts gifted with both traditional and modern idiom, they move across time, allowing space to explore not only the past but also the present.
Competing over Percy Shelley and confronting the loss of children, the characters bring unresolved tensions to the surface. Was Fanny the monster so powerfully realised in Shelley’s iconic novel Frankenstein, the innocent, ultimately self destroying creation? The play raises this and other difficult questions. The violent and devastating consequences of radical idealism are clearly at stake here.
There is a swiftness to the dialogue that is neither too hurried nor too forced. It takes flight and feels natural and authentic. That said, the tone can occasionally feel too level. More variation in pace and emotional mood would help the piece breathe. Assertions, sometimes exquisitely crafted, could benefit from more space to be digested. A little more dramaturgy would allow these moments to land fully, offering silence and reflection for both characters and audience.
The text is clever, witty, intense and earnest. At times, the writer’s research shows a little too obviously in the mouths of the characters, with certain polemical notes slightly overstated. A touch more subtlety in how the women judge each other, especially as assumptions are made by the writer that not every audience member may share, could further strengthen the piece. But these are minor quibbles in what is otherwise a carefully constructed and emotionally intelligent work.
There is a sweet, ironic and genuinely dark payoff at the end of the hour, which I will not spoil. The final moments offer some kind of resolution. If not closure, then at least mutual recognition and understanding. It is theatre as encounter. Synergy arises from this meeting of the three women and from our witnessing of it.
One line lingers. Was suicide presented as a selfish act? The play poses this and other provocations, never giving easy answers. You will learn a lot about the three characters, particularly the sister you likely knew least about. The ghosts speak, and what they say matters.
In my home city of Brighton, many of us often walk down to the pier to watch the murmuration. Just to feel something stirring. That is what happens in this piece. Something stirs. In one moment there is synergy, in the script and these three connected souls join up and the wordplay becomes a together-dance. In another, conflict, accusation and anger erupt and, through movement, physical stage placement and dialogue, the three break apart and fragment. It all makes for compelling drama.
I thoroughly recommend you go and see this excellent piece of work, if only for the demonstration of how theatre can evoke both a milieu and something that feels simultaneously historical and contemporary.
