Review: SYLVIA at Royal Albert Hall

SYLVIA began life back in 2018 as a far less impressive experiment than the finely-honed musical spectacular which eventually played at the Old Vic back in 2023 and which now enjoys a short burst of 5 performances at the Royal Albert Hall until Sunday 15th November.

With music by Josh Cohen and DJ Walde (set to Ms Prince’s lyrics based on her book with Priya Parmar), the show takes a slightly scattergun approach to identify the socio-political events for inclusion in the show which covers the 1903-1928 period. With so much to potentially shoe-horn into a 2 hour 30 min production (including interval), certainly less would have been more, but what to cull?

As an audience member you are treated to an intense but enlightening early 20th century British political history lesson, and there have been some alterations to the original sequencing and format which ensure a smoother end result which favours entertainment over mere didactic historical lecturing. For example, Keir Hardie’s early Labour Party connection (and presumed love affair with Sylvia) seems sharper than I remembered it, with the reflective “Did You See Me“ being a stand-out which enables Naomi Katiyo’s Sylvia to set out her stall and move out of Beverley Knight’s shadow in her role of the domineering matriarch of both the family and the movement.

Hardie (Tachia Newall) as the leader of the burgeoning Labour movement, becomes the catalyst to Sylvia’s association with the socialist worker’s rights rather than simply the movement for women’s suffrage espoused by her mother. It ultimately causes their estrangement.

Peppered throughout with montages involving the pompous warmonger Winston Churchill (Castell Parker) he proved at turns staunch in the face of resistance and later, hen-pecked by his mother Jennie (the zanily OTT Kenedy Small) and reprimanded by his brilliant and long-suffering wife Clementine (the intelligently restrained Collette Guitart) whose scathingly tongue-in-cheek anonymous letter to The Times referenced in “One of the Doomed” helps wind down the first half. The second opens with hi-jinx in the form of an all-female self-defence montage entitled “Suffrajitsu” in response to a series of brutal on-street attacks and beatings.

All the company numbers are powerful and the vocal dexterity on stage is truly impressive. If there was a male heartthrob of the night, it came in the form of Sylvia’s later beau Silvio Corio (Ivano Turco) a lithe and wiry fellow with a Latin lilt which caused hearts to flutter. The quality of the overall offering is extremely slick and thoroughly deserving of the positive and enthusiastic buzz which pervaded the collective audience as it left South Kensington on a chill Friday evening.

If you haven’t previously experienced this dynamic and explosive production, I strongly urge you to do so. Beverley Knight is an extraordinary talent in any environment, but she fills the RAH auditorium with her star quality, and in so doing, lifts the entire company to deliver some excellent work.

Sylvia Tickets