Review: Modern sensibilities meet national myths in Boudica on Leamington stage

​Britannia, AD 61. The Romans are firmly in charge, and the various native tribes that make up the fledgling British nation live uneasily alongside their masters.​

That peace is broken when the Romans seize the lands of the Iceni tribe, overruling customs of nobility. Honour, apart from power, is besmirched, and his wife Boudica (Julie Godfrey) and daughters Blodwynn (Rosie Pankhurst) and Alonna (Martha Allen-Smith) rise up to take revenge. For a while, they present a serious challenge to Roman power, until internal divisions between the tribes help to bring about their inevitable downfall.

Boudica, by Tristan Bernays, is a play Shakespeare might have written, based on a national myth and full of complex issues of national identity, honour, personal integrity and tragedy. And like Shakespeare’s plays the violence on stage, of which there is good deal, is matched by the rhetoric of many of the speeches. Boudica tells a great, if somewhat singular, story while at the same time peeling away the complex issues behind the national(ist) façade. It is a play that touches on modern sensibilities as much it does as historical events.

The Loft Theatre has a reputation for great acting, direction and stage settings, and none disappoints here. Julie Godfrey is particularly impressive as Boudica; she embodies the complex personal and political divisions within her role with dignity and power. Joshua Smith as Catus Decimus, the Roman Procurator, is a pleasant surprise, a young actor, new to The Loft, with real stentorian power. He is one to watch. Paul Curran as Suetonius, the Roman General, Mark Roberts and Connor Bailey as the British leaders Cunobeline and Badvoc all deliver muscular performances. Rosie Pankhurst and Martha Allen-Smith as Boudica’s daughters match them word for word and blow for blow.

For all the violence inherent within the play, I for one might have wished it a little bloodier, as it seemed at times as if sensibilities were being observed. The play is, in a sense, about violence, and if we are to see these things writ large on stage there should be no getting away from their awful consequences.

Boudica runs until June 17. Visit lofttheatrecompany.com or call 01926 830680 to book.