Main House, Arcola Theatre - 20 November 2013 - 21 December 2013

Cast

Tom Bateman

Daniel Crossley

Simon Darwen

James Northcote

Emma West

Jayne Wisener

★★★★ 'Directed by spritely efficiency by Lotte Wakeham' Evening Standard

★★★★ 'Jeremy Green's vigorous, entertaining and ultimately haunting play' Libby Purves, Theatre Cat

★★★★ Arts Desk

'A superb performance by Emma West' The Guardian

'West is a name to watch' The Times

‘To yearn for something – doesn’t that make life more intense?’

Lizzie Siddal is a new play that tells the dramatic story of the woman who was ‘Ophelia’ in Millais’ famous painting. It charts her dazzling trajectory from model to lover to artist, to a tragic figure in her own right.

London, 1849. Lizzie is plucked from the obscurity of a bonnet shop to model for the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood – an intoxicating group of young painters bent on revolutionising the Victorian art world.

Inspired by their passion and ambition, she throws herself headlong into their lives and their art – nearly dying in the creation of ‘Ophelia’. The painting is a triumph. But Lizzie wants more and dares to dream of being a painter herself.

Falling for their charismatic leader Dante Gabriel Rossetti, she becomes his muse and his lover and, against the odds, does succeed in winning independence as a female artist. She even secures a sponsor – the great critic, John Ruskin. But independence isn’t always what it seems, love can be fickle – and all art is a kind of deception. Lizzie is betrayed, and her response sparks a tragic denouement that still stirs debate to this day.