Princess Essex: A convincing tribute to the first black woman to enter a British beauty pageant
In 1908, Princess Dinubolu of Senegal made history by becoming the first black woman to compete in a beauty pageant in the UK. Just over a century later, this new work about her story marks another such moment as Anne Odeke becomes the first woman of colour to star in her own play at the Globe.
Princess Dinubolu was warned about “local prejudice” when she applied to Southend’s first international pageant, but rather than deterring her, it seemed only to spur her on. “People have told me that only cream-and-pink little English misses can win and that judges have no eyes for any other sort. I wish to prove them wrong,” she told a newspaper at the time. Her involvement in the pageant made headlines as far as Australia. She reached the second round but afterwards this elusive figure seemed to drop off the face of the earth. Who was she really?
Odeke has tried to fill in the gaps. In her imagining, this woman was no Senegalese princess but rather a working-class maid from Essex in disguise. Developed from her 2022 touring one-woman show, Odeke’s expanded satire has got rid of the shaky modern-day framing device and instead fully immerses us in the world of Edwardian Southend.
Bunting and flags adorn the Globe and the chorus, bursting onto the stage in a fabulous array of blue-and-white bathing suits, pantaloons and corsets, immediately transport us back in time. (Hayley Grindle’s Edwardian-style costumes prove a real highlight throughout, with an impressive range of dress designs to denote the countries represented in the beauty pageant.) A Punch and Judy entertainer cycles past with his puppet show. In case we’re in any doubt as to the setting, the cast opens with a bright-eyed rendition of “Oh I do like to be by the seaside”.
That initially optimistic daydream is quickly dispelled. When Odeke’s naïve Joanna is brought along to the Kursaal, Southend’s amusement park, she is horrified to see a Congolese pygmy presented as a circus act, dancing for bread. Yet behind the scenes, Batwa – a brilliant Alison Halstead – is a tribal chief, exudes a regal air and wears a suit rather than the grass-like skirt and white paint he dons onstage. He is “in” on the act. “You can be more than one thing, you know,” he tells her. After being rejected from a pageant, Joanna’s subsequent efforts to concoct a royal persona for herself so she can be “seen” and accepted by society offers a striking insight into how people of colour navigated the prejudices of the time.
In her attempt to flesh out the limited source material, Odeke has overstuffed her play with historical talking points, from the waning empire to women’s suffrage to local preoccupations in Southend. But do we really need a subplot about another suffragette maid or a “baddie” King Edward VII? I’m not convinced these underdeveloped tangents warranted the two-and-a-half hour runtime, and they left the production feeling baggy despite its fast-pace energy. And while the writing is generally sharp, the exposition can feel a little heavy-handed at times. It’s not really a surprise to learn, for instance, that Joanna’s fight to enter the pageant isn’t just about her entering a pageant. It’s about “a cause greater than myself”, we’re needlessly reminded.
Odeke herself is a charismatic presence with superb comic timing. She is just as adept at finding her character’s moments of doubt and dejection as she is at the brash defiance and swagger, and manages to draw out the desired reactions from the audience at just the right moments. Alongside its subversive humour, this production does not shy away from its uncomfortable moments and allows us to sit with them. There are many gaps when it comes to the documentation of black British history: Odeke’s attempt to fill in the blanks of Princess Dinubolu’s story is a valiant and pretty convincing one that has helped to bring this little-known figure out of obscurity.
Until Oct 26; shakespearesglobe.com
