Simon Ward reviews Mrs T Foresees at the Lion & Unicorn Theatre

Centred around the life story and formidable presence of Irish clairvoyant Mrs Molly Tolpuddle (compellingly played by Carol Tagg), writer and director Gail Matthews’s play encompasses a variety of topics, from a satirical look at the social attitudes of Victorian society across the British Empire, to the treatment and mistreatment of those that said society deemed mad. The story is told by Mrs T herself, with the aid of her fellow inmates in the Yarra Bend Home for the Lunatic and Insane, Franny (Dottie Lubienska), Lewis (Michal Nowak) and Pinky (Tom Barnes).

It is an all-too believable tale of a young woman born in questionable circumstances and with few prospects in the shadow of the Great Famine in the 1840s and sent off to the other side of the world in a convict ship. Ironically, although no convict, she is treated worse than they are since the local bureaucracy is designed for the majority of those arriving in Australia. Likewise, her dreams of making a living by singing and dancing on stage are deemed utterly inappropriate. If she is lucky she will find long, back-breaking work for miserable pay and with almost no freedom. She will also, of course, have to fend off the attentions of the many predatory males who will assume that a servant girl is fair game.

Against all the odds, she does manage to make a life, even find a tolerable husband and bear a child. She is also supported by a gift she has – ‘the gift’ of clairvoyency. It seems that she really can tell people their future. It is lucrative, but frowned upon, just like her singing and dancing dreams. She seems unable to fit in to what society expects, so she is shunned and sent away again. Though fate has no happy ending planned for Mrs T, she can still amaze her audiences with tales of the unimaginable future – of people flying in metal boxes, of women getting the vote, of female Prime Ministers in Britain. And at least she finally has the chance to tell her story in a room above a pub.

This is a strange hybrid of a piece. Framed as an old woman’s tale of her journey from innocence to experience, it transforms into a much broader critique of society in general, taking in the Victorian hypocrisy of a prudish society with a thriving brothel industry and the absurdity of Australian snobbery in a society made up of convicts. The ill-treatment of aboriginal peoples is not ignored. Within the wide-ranging themes, Molly Tolpuddle’s own story risks being lost – for example her discovery of the circumstances of her birth should hit harder than it does. The interventions of Molly’s fellow aslyum dwellers sometimes seem to distract rather than add to the narrative, not assisted by the decision to have them ghoulishly dressed and made up. This may have made more sense as a pared-down, one-woman show, to allow us to focus on a life, which was, after all, never less than intriguing.

Mrs T Foresees is running at the Lion & Unicorn Theatre, 42-44 Gaisford Street, London NW5 2ED until Saturday 7th June