On Wednesday 19th September 2018 I was lucky enough to see a production called ‘The Cause’, a production by Dreadnought southwest, it was written by Natalie McGrath and directed by Josie Sutcliffe. The play features three characters only, Millicent Fawcett played by Ruth Mitchell, Emmeline Pankhurst played by Michelle Ridings and The Trumpet played by Remi Oriogun-Williams. 

The play is set in 1913 and is an imagined meeting between the two great leaders of the suffragists and suffragette movement, one by means of peaceful protest and the other by bombs and hunger strikes. The meeting takes place in Millicent’s Orchard at a time in 1913 where Emmeline has been imprisoned and on hunger strike but has been let out to prevent her becoming a martyr, and she is now on the run. This was as part of the cat and mouse act and the Temporary Discharge for ill-health act. It looks at the two enemies reflecting on their childhood when they used to be friends and looks at the effect of the tragic death of Emily Wilding-Davison at the royal derby day when attempting to tie the cause’s colour to the king’s horse, in the process she was stampeded, and this resulted in her death; This affected both sides of the suffrage movement. The end of the play is the two leaders agreeing on one thing and sharing an experience before exiting the stage. 

Now that I have covered the outline of the play onto my review… 

Although ‘The Cause’ is not something that I would go and see just out of the blue for fun I did enjoy the overall experience, I was lucky enough to get to see it twice as I was helping as front of house on their public evening performance, I enjoyed the evening performance more as it seemed to be more relaxed however more intense. Something we learned when speaking to the cast is that they gage the audience to gage their own performance, so they tailor the show to fit with the showing, this is clear throughout the performance as there is a lot of audience interaction through the form of ‘The Trumpet’.  

When looking at Trumpet there is a lot more there than you may think as she is based off the foundation of theatre in the way that she is a representation of Greek chorus this is shown in the way she seems to narrate the action and is able to jump in and out of the audience, she is also supposed to be a bright happy character this is demonstrated in her costume as it is full of colour and life, unlike the two other character who wear full white or black. 

I did enjoy the simplistic set and the use of media to enhance it, the set was made up of white tiles on the floor and a white bench with a white sheet of fabric at the back, this could be taken to show purity or maybe just to help you focus on the actors. Throughout there were multiple media assists, these were in the forms of projections, audio and lighting. The projection accompanied the dialogue and at one point they were speaking of fallen women and there was an animation this I felt was very effective. 

To conclude ‘The Cause’ is a different and intriguing piece of theatre that even though it is not my normal cup of tea was enjoyable and well worth the time; However there were some points that were not very clear especially when speaking of Emily Wilding-Davison, the way it came across from their side was that she deliberately killed herself to prove a point, however as I have already mentioned it was an accident, other than that though it was a mind opening production.