With the Corpus Playroom shrouded in darkness, Claire Clairmont (Ellie Heikel) floats into the gloom with a candle, prim and grinning, to be met by the sighs of her stepsister Mary Shelley (Natalie Reeve), tortured by the wicked slander that is circulating regarding her late husband’s life, as well as Clairmont’s ex-lover, Lord Byron. Coquettish and effervescent, Claire convinces her wallowing companion to stage a play: one of truth that will silence the critics. Of course, they will perform as Percy Shelley and Lord Byron themselves, crawling into the skins of their dead lovers, and ultimately confronting their own blindness.

The exhilaration of this production lies in the delicate balance that Natalie Reeve's script creates between raucous laughter and silent contemplation: Byron’s marvellous ego as he waltzes around the stage is counteracted by the narrative’s gradually solemn tone, threats of crisis cementing itself in between the chuckles. Reeve shapes her characters from this tragicomic mould, and whilst we are bombarded with familiar caricatures and self-referential humour (Byron regularly and hilariously makes light of the cultural impact his person has created), the characters aren't inhuman, and all are subject to moments of sensitivity and sorrow. Both Reeve and Heikel manage this flux with skill, rapidly masking themselves according to what the narrative demands, and smoothly undulating between the sombre and the outrageous.

Despite the minimalism of the set design, the bareness is made inconsequential by the rapidity and energy of the narrative, a whirlpool transporting an audience from England to a river in Italy within minutes, with the audience so caught up in the colourfulness of the characters that the set is redeemed. Even so, Reeve’s awareness of the limitations of her production’s budget, as well as the Corpus Playroom’s restrictions as a space, were woven into the script with humorous results, cleverly sidestepping any bitterness a spectator might have had over the barrenness. 

At times, the regularity of the characters was interrupted by Reeve and Heikel switching between Percy Shelley and Byron according to the scene. Whilst characters were marked by the colour of their jackets, and both Reeve and Heikel adopted similar mannerisms for a character, the sudden switches seemed unnatural and disjointed. Additionally, crushing many years of history into the space of one hour always proves problematic, and whilst the production would have benefited from a longer running time, the narrative remained clear and structured throughout.

Mary and Claire: A Defence of Poetry is both a highly entertaining Romantics 101 class and a wonderfully devised play-within-a-play. Reeve and Heikel’s enthusiasm for their production is largely evident in the vitality that they inject into their performances, and it is difficult not to be infected by it as you watch them hurling themselves across the stage and cradling one another on a makeshift boat made of two chairs. It’s mad, bad, but brilliant to see.