Bird Grove by Alexi Kaye Campbell, Hampstead Theatre, Eton Avenue, Swiss Cottage, London NW3 | until 21 March 2026 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Review by William Russell

Photo credit: Johan Persson

Bird Grove

by Alexi Kaye Campbell

Hampstead Theatre, Eton Avenue, Swiss Cottage, London NW3 | until 21 March 2026

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Review by William Russell  

“Great performances, superb play.”

George Elliot was one of England's greatest novelists but when it comes to Mary Ann Evans, who was, of course Elliot, it is another matter. Daughter of an estate manager she lived with her widowed father in Bird Grove, the far too expensive house near Coventry he had acquired, had the run of the library belonging to the  Albury Estate, and became more or less his housekeeper and  acquired an education far better than women of the day were allowed and in her early twenties came under the influence of a neighbouring couple Charles Bray and his wife Cara, who were free thinkers and regarded as dangerous radicals. Mary Ann did look after her father, was more or less his housekeeper, but she had no intention of doing what her brother Isaac wanted and get herself a husband. The play is leisurely, the courtship by the chosen young man is very funny, and the developing war or words between Mary Ann, an immaculate performance by Elizabeth Dulau, and her father Robert, a towering one from Owen Teale is something to relish. But it is when she comes under the influence of the Brays and when, after her father's death, she finds out how she has been left that Mary Ann embarks on a world all her own. The house is to be sold, her brother gets the money, and she gets an allowance is barely enough to live on. It is an evening of discoveries – Jane Austen's world is well known, whereas Mary Ann's is not and here it is laid elegantly out until right at the end a surprise is sprung which ties everything together – and above all not just making sense of what has happened but revealing what is to come. It is performed on a splendidly simple set – tall bookcases, a kitchen in one corner where teas are prepared, and a fast blank back wall which serves as a window on the world beyond the confines of the one she lives in. Director Anna Ledwich takes her time but if it is an elegantly slow evening it is still one that is completely engrossing/ It should attract the town to Hampstead and maybe even end up in town. It also reveals that Elizabeth Dulau is capable of far more than her television successes suggest. This is that rarity, an evening that satisfies, informs and challenges, with Mary Ann at one point tossing all those famous must-read novels by men off the bookcase shelves as she is about to break the chains that bind her. She becomes, of course, a must-read novelist and a woman whose later life is lived by her own rules, one reason why she did not end up buried in Westminster Abbey but in Highgate Cemetery. Bird Grove us really as good as it gets and does justice to an amazing woman who as a novelist had to hid behind the name of a man.

Cast

Johnnie Broadbent – Horace Garfield

Jolyon Coy – Isaac Evans

Elizabeth Dulau – Mary Ann Evans

Katie Eldred – Dorothea

Tom Espiner – Charles Bray

Rebecca Scroggs – Cara Bray

James Staddon – Monsieur Lafontaine/Hugo Baring

Owen Teale – Robert Evans

Sarah Woodward – Dorothea

Creatives

Director – Anna Ledwich

Designer - Sarah Beato

Lighting Designer – Matt Haskins

Sound Designer & Composer -Harry Blake

Movement Director – Chi-San Howard

Voice & Dialect Coach - Michaela Kennen.