We’re lucky to have the Lyric Hammersmith, a West End-quality theatre, right here in H&F.
Their latest production – The Empress – opened this week to positive reviews, complete with a former EastEnders star! Here’s what you need to know:
The play tells the parallel stories of Queen Victoria’s love for her Indian servant turned teacher Abdul Karim, and the experience of hardheaded Rani, an Indian nanny abandoned in London by a wealthy white family. The storylines tell the rise of multicultural London in a light-hearted but honest look at British colonialism.
Queen Victoria – played by former Eastenders star, Alexandra Gilbreath – is presented as an open minded, often humorous, pioneering character whose growing anti-racist stance mimics far more closely the opinions of the play’s lowliest characters and not those of her royal peers or servants.
It is a presentation that clashes with her character’s continuing love of colonial rule and wish to expand the British Empire further.
BBC Casualty’s Raj Bajaj’s portrayal of Abdul Karim is entertaining throughout and his wittiness a perfect balance to the hard truths author Tanika Gupta has his character share with the Queen.
Rani’s adventure probably takes fewer creative liberties. Abandoned and left homeless at the docks she’s forced to rely on the friends she made on the voyage to Britain, the mixed lot of people she meets along the way, and her own determinedness to survive and improve her situation.
She faces – potentially expected – bumps in the road but her story ends exactly where you hope it will, and her biggest moments are often met with deafening silence from the stalls as the audience cranes to catch every word.
The Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of The Empress is running at the Lyric Hammersmith until Saturday 28 October. Tickets start at £15.
Free first night
Want to get your hands on free tickets to the Lyric? Anyone who lives of works in Hammersmith & Fulham can enter a draw to claim free tickets for any main house show’s first night.
Just register on the Lyric Hammersmith website.
