THE centrepiece of York Theatre Royal's female-focused season, Of Woman Born, will be this summer's community play, Everything Is Possible, the previously untold story of the York Suffragettes.
Workshops began last week for a play set in 1913, but before then comes a forerunner to that tale of women across the country, outraged by inequality and prejudice rising up to demand change.
Jessica Swale's Blue Stockings, premiered in 2013 at Shakespeare's Globe, is being staged in York for the first time by the York Settlement Community Players under the direction of Maggie Smiles, who also directed York Shakespeare Project's all-female Henry V in 2015.
The setting is 1896-1897 as four young women go up to Girton College, the first women's college at Cambridge University, in a tumultuous year when a groundbreaking vote will determine if women will be allowed to graduate with a degree, as opposed to merely attending the university.
All four are studying science, previously a male preserve. Charlotte Wood's Tess Moffat, Kosi Carter's Celia Willbond and Amelia Twiddle's Carolyn Addison hail from middle-class, educated backgrounds, or posher in globe-trotting Carolyn's case. In contrast, the brightest of them all, Beth Stevens's Maeve Sullivan is an Irish girl being sponsored through university by a member of the aristocracy.
The suffragist movement is bubbling up, and the stern head of college, Beryl Nairn's Elizabeth Welsh, is determined the "Bluestockings" graduation vote should in no way be linked with the suffragettes, whereas their tutor Miss Blake (Sophie Buckley) wants her students to embrace change and empowerment in all its forms.
Charlotte Wood's Tess Moffat and Matthew Pattison's Will Bennett in Blue Stockings. Picture: Michael J Oakes
Elsewhere, Elizabeth Welsh will take a decision that further emphasises that not all women are pulling in the same direction against the prevailing tide of inequality, when it is already hard enough for the fledgling students, who come up against the stultifying misogyny of Paul Toy's Dr Maudsley, the disdain of David Phillipps's Professor Radleigh and the arrogant antagonism of Finn Ella's student Lloyd.
Such is his vile swagger, you will want to knock Lloyd's block of, in a performance by Ella far, far removed from his genial comic roles in the Rowntree Players pantomimes.
If all this sounds very grave and agit-prop, Swale's writing spans the serious, the humorous, the political, and the playful (the girls hitching up their dresses to try out the Can-Can for the first time).
The impressive Wood's Jess has the central role, at once pressing for women's educational advancement with her zeal for science, while being caught up in her first romantic entanglement with Thomas Barry's Ralph Mayhew, whose voice so struck Maggie Smales that she cast him after only a matter of seconds – and you can hear and see why.
Take note too of Matthew Pattison's exemplary, quietly affecting turn as the play's caring, love-struck wallflower, Will Bennett, while Rosy Rowley's well researched musial direction and Sam McAvoy's original compositions add to the play's zest. Hats off too to Sara Burns's stage design.
Tickets for Blue Stockings are in hot demand and rightly so for a superb production that graduates with first class honours.
Blue Stockings, York Settlement Community Players, York Theatre Royal Studio, until Saturday, 7.45pm nightly and 2pm Saturday matinee. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here