Monstrous Bodies

Two teenage girls strive to find their voice in unchartered territory centuries apart. Read more …

It's 1812 - America has just declared war on Britain shortly after the Prime Minister was shot dead in parliament. Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, who will later become Mary Shelley and write the first science fiction novel ever, Frankenstein, is travelling on a boat from London to Dundee to stay with the radical Baxter family, and to find her imagination.

In 2017 – Roxanne Walker had so much studying to do for school she nearly didn’t go to the party on Peep O’Day Lane. But everyone needs a night off, right? She doesn’t mean to crash out but when someone takes a topless photo of her, Roxanne’s life as she knows it is over.

Unless it isn’t.

The critical consensus

In a high-octane study of how a moral high ground can be used as an excuse for misogyny, it shows how necessary it is now more than ever for young women to write their own story.

(*) Neil Cooper, Coffee-Table Notes, 23/04/2017

Sandy Thomson’s new creation at Dundee Rep is something of a work in progress. She has so much to say about the challenges facing young women across the centuries that there is a lack of clear focus overall.

Joy Watters, Across the Arts, 24/04/2017

Monstrous Bodies remains a breathtakingly ambitious piece of contemporary theatre, sustained by two magnificent central performances from Eilidh McCormick as Mary and Rebekah Lumsden as Roxanne.

(*) Joyce McMillan, The Scotsman, 25/04/2017

While Thomson’s play would undoubtedly benefit from a greedier edit, her production contains some genuinely exciting moments.

(*) (*) Allan Radcliffe, 27/04/2017

Any skill or nuance in the piece is all but drowned out by the crude polemic of the modern day scenario.

Mark Brown, Scottish Stage, 04/05/2017

A truly impressive, buzzing cast (not least Eilidh McCormick as Mary) and beautifully-lit staging can’t distract from the occasionally glacially slow progression of both narratives, or the migraine-inducing soundscape and choreography employed to signify the shift from one to the other.

(*) (*) Paul F Cockburn, Broadway Baby, 04/05/2017