Modest

1874

Elizabeth Thompson stuns the artistic establishment with her painting The Roll Call

Five years later, she falls two votes short of becoming the first woman elected to the Royal Academy

In between, she shoulders the hopes and dreams of female artists across the country, while fighting for her place at a table full of top hats, neckties and mutton chop beards

A thrilling collision of music hall, cabaret and drag king swagger, Modest tells the true story of a pioneering megastar of the Victorian art scene

Written by Ellen Brammar with music by Rachel Barnes

REVIEWS

'Exceptional... a potent mix of drag, searing comedy, indignant fury and tenderness... a raucous cabaret [that] is a forensic evisceration of staid "respectability"' ~ The Stage