Marys Seacole by Jackie Sibblies Drury - ★★★☆☆
Last week we headed to the Donmar Warehouse to watch Marys Seacole by Jackie Sibblies Drury. Humbly put, Mary Seacole was a British Caribbean nurse and businesswoman, best known for her contributions tending to British soldiers during the Crimean war. She was a remarkable woman, and as Drury puts it “a traveller, a hotelier, businesswoman…[and] the most impressive woman you’ve ever met.”
Mary Seacole is performed by the powerhouse that is Kayla Meike, and alongside an equally talented Déja J Bowens they play a variety of characters - with the common thread being that they fill positions of care, whether that be as nurses or nannies.
The show opens with a strong monologue from Mary, we learn about her Creole heritage, “good scotch blood” and how her mother’s influence contributed to her choice to become a nurse. The play then bounces between the past and present, and we’re transported from an NHS Care facility, to the 19th century and various places in-between.
While the show move from century to century, and the cast adopt different characters, the continuity is preserved through themes, and impressively small but common behaviours that tie each cast member to their changing characters. Through each scene we see both Black women adopt the role of carers, but the question soon arises - at what cost? This is poignantly, and subtly seen through Deja who takes care of a presumably white child as a nanny, while her own daughter is separated from her and lives in the Caribbean.
In true Drury and Latif style as the play nears the end chaos ensues. We are bought to the front line of the Crimean War, bodies are strewn across the stage, rubble falls and voices rise. And, just as we grow tired of the chaos without any explicit meaning, Llewella Gideon’s monologue somewhat brings things together. She remarks on how the labour and care of Black women is vital, but is often met with hostility - “them need us but them nah want us.”
We admire the sentiment behind Marys Seacole. The desire to bring Mary’s story to stage and dissect the burden of care that can fall to Black women (professionally and personally), how it’s often under appreciated, and what this means for the women themselves. However, the show falls short in places, and consequently some of the meaning is lost. Scenes are unnecessarily drawn out with extended dialogue, and the non-linear timeline does not add to the telling, or our understanding of the story, but rather takes away.