Modest by Ellen Brammer, music by Rachel Barnes – Kiln Theatre, London

Middle Child, a confident and exciting ‘gig theatre’ group from Hull, bound into the Kiln Theatre with a highly entertaining piece of perked up history, performed by a drag cast. The story of Elizabeth Thompson, nearly the first woman to be elected to the Royal Academy, is an intriguing piece of re-remembered history. Thompson’s Crimean War picture, ‘Roll Call’, was a public sensation at the RA’s 1874 Summer Exhibition, putting pressure on the Academy to formally recognise her. Several years of machinations followed but in 1879, following further public success despite the RA’s best efforts, she missed out on election by two votes.

So far, so worthy – but that’s not how Middle Child do things. Elizabeth, played by Emir Dineen, throws herself at the drama of her role in a flame dress, fabulously talented and absurdly self-centred. She fights a set of ludicrous RA fops gleefully played by LJ Parkinson, Fizz Sinclair and Isabel Adomakoh Young. Fizz also plays her suffragette-poet sister Alice, while Libra Teejay is both non-binary Bessie and Queen Victoria. Jackie Bardelang is Millais. They mash period dialogue with amusingly contemporary interludes (Queen Victoria on seeing the exhausted soldiers of ‘Roll Call’: “They are fucked!”). There are songs, by Rachel Barnes, including the RA Committee number ‘We Are Men’. Directed by Luke Skilbeck and Paul Smith, Modest is a riotous and completely contemporary evening, refusing to take anything seriously as a remarkably effective way to get the message across.