by Tristan Bernays
seen at Shakespeare's Globe on 12 September 2017
Eleanor Rhode directs Gina McKee as Boudica queen of the Iceni (a tribe in what is now East Anglia) in this new play with Joan Iyiola and Natalie Simpson as her daughters Alonna and Blodwynn, Forbes Masson as Cunobeline and Abraham Popoola as Bladvoc, kings respectively of the neighbouring tribes of the Trinovantes and the Belgae.
The sources for Boudica's story are fragmentary, and the earliest are of course in Latin and based on a Roman point of view hardy sympathetic to a rebellious queen who for a short time posed a threat to the province of Britannia - although of course after her demise she could be safely used as a rhetorical device to point up contrasts between barbarian integrity and the corruption of the imperial court.
