Manuelita, Underbelly Cowgate

By Gwenni Hawkins

To try and sell a relatively unknown figure to a group of strangers within an hour is no mean feat, and Manuelita rises to the occasion magnificently.

The audience enters to a cosy setting, with Tamsin Clarke (writer, director and performer) greeting the audience members as they take their seats. The welcome is enhanced by music, which was provided throughout the play by the award-winning guitarist Camila Menjura. The addition of an onstage musician was a refreshing break from the egocentric histrionics that seem to have typified one woman shows, and solo theatre in general, in the past few years. I particularly enjoyed the cheeky Latin American rendition of “The Blue Danube”, the song to which Manuela Saenz and her famous lover Simon Bolivar first dance as a couple.

For so simple a component, the influence of the guitarist cannot be underplayed. At the very least, the music provided a background which immediately transported the viewer to a brighter place than the dark wet recesses of Edinburgh. But more significantly, the music worked in tandem with the narrative, and at crucial moments instigated a change in tone and movement, with more subtlety and poignance than would have been achieved by bold staging or direction alone.

So what of Manuelita herself? Manuela Sáenz was the mistress of Simon Bolivar, a figure perhaps underappreciated in northern European countries, but who was a key figure in the liberation of South America from the Spanish monarchy. Manuelita manages to avoid representing a history lesson, and across the hour of performance is neither a lecture nor didactic. It struck the perfect balance, in articulately communicating a fascinating movement in international history, while leaving me wanting enough to frantically scour the best of the internet (*ahem, Google and Wikipedia*) for a potted South American history.

The simple yet effective staging made the play. It feels lazy to call a lot of what Clarke achieved physical theatre, because nothing about either the use of props nor movement seems engineered to make a point or break new ground. What the choreography did provide however, complemented again by Menjura’s playing, was subtle segways and scene changes, an impressive feat for a piece of theatre based solely around an hour-long monologue.

My one criticism of the play is that the story of Manuela is too often facilitated by the narratives of the men in her life. Initially this comes through her frustrations at her English aristocratic husband, then the men who she commanded, and ultimately Bolivar himself. While this may perhaps be inevitable and unavoidable considering the overtly patriarchal 19th century structures under which Manuela lived, it jars somewhat with Clarke’s opening gambit. She opens with the sentiment that Manuela had been written out of history for no other reason than her gender, and tries toreinstate her in history for her own merits - in the voice of Manuela, claiming that Bolivar “was my lover”, and not the other way round. To do this aspiration justice, just a little more was needed in terms of her own independent storyline.

However, this distracts only slightly from what is a slick, engaging piece of theatre, which conveys the life of the largely unsung Manuela Sáenz with tenderness and charm.

PS in short: For an hour-long masterclass on how to write, star in and direct a one-woman show, Manuelita is your hit.

Manuelita, Underbelly Cowgate

Daily until 24th August: 12.40

★★★★1/2

(4.5 stars)

@postscriptjour

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