The Regina Monologues

Monologues have been popular during the pandemic. The Bridge Theatre produced Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads – with an all-star cast – during the first lockdown; then came David Hare’s new one-man play Beat the Devil in the autumn and, nearly a year on from the start of the pandemic, the Maltings Theatre begins its streaming season with The Regina Monologues.

It’s a clever decision. Rebecca Russell and Jenny Wafer’s play, first performed in St Albans in 2004, is a modern update on the lives of Henry VIII’s six wives: middle-aged Cathy Aragon (Jill Priest) is desperate to conceive through IVF, but can’t convince her husband to masturbate into a pot; Jane Seymour (Lucy Crick) is a juice-cleansing, yoga-stretching neurotic; Katherine Parr (played with relish by Anna Franklin, who also directs) is a gold digger more concerned with booking a cruise than the futures of her husband’s three children.

Female experiences, including miscarriage and fertility struggles, are discussed intimately, sometimes painfully so, such as when Annie Boleyn (Amy Connery) describes the grief of losing her baby boy. The simple set shows each of the women in private spaces – a bed, a boudoir, a mother’s rocking chair – and Michael Bird’s lighting shrouds the women in darkness, further secluding them.

There are some fun updates to the play – references to Footballers’ Wives are replaced by Love Island – and in a post-show discussion, Franklin sensitively defends casting Sarah Priddy (Anne Cleves) as a transgender woman. While this is a play based on the lives of 16th-century women, it is very much rooted in and concerned with contemporary female experiences.