THE VEGAN TIGRESS London Premiere At the Bread & Roses Theatre

Professional theatre company LynchPin will present the London premiere of a new play at the Bread & Roses Theatre, Clapham.

The Vegan Tigress by Claire Parker tells the story of a 19th Century fairy tale writer who accidentally summons a ghost. The spirit is the highly-offended mother of the lover the writer spurned many years before. The opposing worlds of free spirits and tightly-laced corset collide in a hilarious play which explores memory, love and legacy and dares to ask where stories escape to when they've run their course.

The play is inspired by the life and works of Victorian author Mary De Morgan, whose fairy tales subverted the genre. The production coincides with the 175th anniversary of De Morgan's birth (24th February 1850). Mary De Morgan's mother was a spiritualist and her father a professor of mathematics. She was woman of independent means, a socialist, suffragist and activist. Mary wrote several volumes fairy tales, tearing up the rule book on expected outcomes for boys, girls and happy ever afters While they often critiqued the social and political norms of her day, her stories are strange, wonderful and eerie. She grew up amongst artists and activists in a circle of free-thinking Pre-Raphaelites and knew the families of William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones, Christina and Gabriel Rossetti and Rudyard Kipling, and would frequently read her stories to their children.

This new light comedy by Claire Parker is a reimagining of the moment Mary encounters a straight-laced and formidable ghost from her past. The spirit forces her to re-evaluate her own story as she finds herself on the cusp of a life-changing journey. The play celebrates the art and act of storytelling, as Mary and the ghost spar while one of De Morgan's tales is woven into the drama. The production playfully explores ideas of memory, legacy, love and loss, and how one will be remembered. Will there be a happy ending?

"I'm intrigued by the amorphous quality of narrative and the desire for one's personal story to stan out from the collective. An almost forgotten writer herself, I love to imagine that Mary De Morgan's bright intellect sowed seeds in the minds of her eminent male contemporaries whose names and legacies we do still remember. And that, even though she was ahead of her time, she sought to be heard through her fairy tales. It may be impertinent but I love to pluck inspiring women from the past and bring their fascinating stories into the light once more." Claire Parker, the playwright.

Claire Parker plays Mary De Morgan and Edie Campbell plays the ghost, Lady Tuttle, in a product directed by Tracy Collier.

18th February - 1st March 2025 at the Bread & Roses Theatre, 68 Clapham Manor Street, Clapham SW4 6DZ

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