Mary Prince’s life story was published in 1831 – the first narrative of the life of a female Caribbean slave – and her testimony was instrumental in the passing of the 1833 British Abolition of Slavery Act. Amantha Edmead has taken Mary Prince’s words and created a rich one-woman show – she conveys Mary as a little girl, sold to a family as a slave for the child of the house, as a worker in the salt marshes, as a slave plagued by rheumatism and rejected by a family she has lived with for 13 years.

Edmead has sensitively and powerfully brought Mary’s story to life. It’s all too easy to disregard the past as nothing but history, but hearing Mary’s words from over 200 years ago – the anguish of a mother separated from a child, the pain of finding oneself trapped with no means of escape, the sorrow of being forced to leave friends, family, and country – well, the past isn’t that much of a foreign country, is it?  ★★★★☆    @BookingAround