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Mickey Jo
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Mickey Jo
Now I missed this play when it had its world premiere run at the Almeida Theatre in 2025. Sold out shows, critical acclaim, multiple award nominations and I have been waiting for the best part of a year to get the chance to see it for myself. So it had these impossibly high expectations to which it needed to live up as well as some version of it that I had been crafting in my head this entire time. I am so excited to tell you that not only have I fully boarded the hype train for 1536, which I saw this evening at the Ambassadors Theatre in the west, but when it came time after the show to board my actual train, I was still breathless from the end of this piece of theatre. This was extraordinary on arrival and I cannot wait to tell you all about it and then demand that you all go see it. But before I do, a quick introduction to me. Oh my God. Hey. Welcome to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Or hello to those of you listening to this on podcast platforms. My name is Mickey Jo and I am obsessed with all things theatre, especially when it's this great. I'm making no secret of this when I'm leaving you in no suspense. This was a blazingly good piece of theatre and I've been seeing a lot of great theater recently and it's been, I feel like it's been a while since I've seen like truly jaw dropping, affecting, spectacular, extraordinary. And you start to wonder whether you will be able to notice extraordinary when you encounter it again. And then you do and you realize your fears were unfounded because it just explodes within you. It's this truly exciting thing to be so captivated by, a piece of theatre to hang on every single written word, every nuance of the delivery. I am getting far too ahead of myself in my excitement about this play, but I'm going to attempt to articulate with even half the brilliance of rising star writer Eva Pickett why this is such a soul scorching piece of theatre that you have to go and see if you are a woman and or have ever met or cared about women, but also especially if you explicitly don't care about women. So everyone really has to go and see this play and I do think if enough people did, we could actually incite revolution. But that's a proposal for another day. In the meantime, I am very excited to tell you about 1536. If you have had the chance to see this already, either at the Almeida Theatre last year or recently in the West End, let me know all of your thoughts in the comments section down below. And as always, if you would like to hear more of my reviews, you can find them on YouTube, on podcast platforms, you can find out everything that I'm seeing in my free weekly Substack newsletter. You can sign up for that in the link in the description. And there are plenty more reviews coming soon for you to look forward to. But in the meantime we need to talk about 1536 and why it's one of the most extraordinary things I've seen all year. So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to attempt to give you a spoiler light spoiler free overview of the show. Then we're going to dig a little bit deeper into it, finally concluding by talking about the performances. So if you plan on seeing this but haven't yet had the chance and want a little bit of a flavor of it, just listen to this first section and then pause me, go buy a ticket and come back once you've seen it for yourselves. To begin with, though, before I had seen the play, I was acquainted with the basic narrative premise via a speech given by the brilliant, brilliant critic Sarah Crompton at the Critics Circle Theatre Awards earlier this year. And she began by saying, three women are having a conversation in a field in Essex. It sounds like the premise of a joke, but in fact, it's this remarkable play by Ava Pickett. And in fact, to my surprise, it doesn't actually begin with the three women having a conversation in the field. Instead, it opens with an act of carnal encounter in a tree, and we sort of hear them going at it before the lights have even fully come up. And it's a hedonistic, reckless and passionate encounter between two characters who, by the end of the play will have evolved significantly as the world around them changes drastically. But it's the perfect way in which to contextualize the story that we are going to tell, because this is a story about feminism and what that looks like in 16th century England in conversation with what it looks like today and what has changed and what has remained eerily and uncomfortably and horrifyingly the same. And when we're talking about gender inequality and feminism and historic oppressive misogyny, then sex is a key component of that. It is this thing without which we wouldn't be having all of these other conversations. Not only is it inherent within the relegation of women to a particular role in society, but it's also in so many ways, central to this idea of a sort of seesaw of power dynamics and imbalance between men and women. This thing that was in history often framed as a weakness or vulnerability of the male sex to the wiles and powers of women. This is very much embroiled in the allegations of witchcraft. It's all connected to sex and sensuality, as is the story outside of the story, or adjacent to the story that is being told here. Because ostensibly, this is a story about what is happening in the lives of three young women who are very close friends, living together in this sort of village in Essex, one which we never learn the name of. It's a couple of towns away from Colchester. And truly the idea here is that this could be taking place anywhere during this time. This is meant to be a village just like any other. And I believe Eva Pickett, the playwright, is also from Essex, so there is some connection there. The year in which it is set and the title of the play is not generic. However, it is incredibly specific because it pertains to the date of Anne Boleyn's arrest, trial and beheading at the mercy of her husband, the King, Henry vi. And the way in which this news slowly reaches these women and the way in which they react to it, and the way in which they perceive changes to the world around them as a result of this, and what this revelation of seemingly unbelievable and unlawful violence against the Queen emboldens and inflames in the men of the country, the men of their town, the men in their households, and it's a steady but pronounced change in their lives. Each developing piece of news in the story reaches them slowly. They have to wait for somebody's father to come back from London with news of how it has worsened or continued, whether or not she has been released yet, whether they took her into the Tower via a particular gate, indicating how she was considered at this time, whether she is being accused of treason, whether the men have testified against her, whether she is actually going to be killed. And it's indicative of the way that this news would have filtered out steadily to the regions at that time, even those, all things considered, fairly close to London. And some of the most interesting material within this play, I think, is where we explore their relationship and the relationship of their communities to the Crown, to the King, and to the Queen. They talk a lot about this seeming ridiculous and impossible because the King is so obsessed with the Queen. In an early conversation, there comes the surprise that they can't immediately bring to mind what his name is. They don't necessarily know the name of the king. They just think of him as the king, with him existing as more of a figure or a concept than anything else. And, you know, at this point, he's not on the money and he's not giving Christmas speeches on television, so, you know, it makes sense. They also briefly question to what extent the king dying would affect them so much as the death of the local baker, but back to his adoration of his second wife, Anne Boleyn. And they talk about what a huge deal it was when he sort of broke with the church and with God and enacted this huge constitutional shift in order to facilitate his divorce and his second marriage. And how, given that having happened, it seems impossible that he would imprison his own wife and subsequently execute her. This comes after one character says, kings don't kill their wives, and another replies that kings don't do a lot of the things that he's already done for her. There are also some throwaway lines about the extent to which the country became fascinated by and obsessed with her, and how because she has been imprisoned and publicly labeled as a traitor and treasonous. That the French fashion, with her having come from France now being out of fashion. And then this is followed up with a comedy line when one character says, the French fashion never suited me anyway. So that is probably a good thing for me. A lot of the early comedy of the play, and it is very funny in the first hour, especially of the roughly 110 minute runtime, comes from transposing some modern values and sensibilities onto a historic setting. And there is a sense of contemporary, deliberately anachronistic dialogue at play here in order to, I think, facilitate an understanding of the direct comparison between then and now. Because it would be a real misinterpretation of this play to look at it and consider everything endured by these young women to be simply historic, to not be ongoing violences and ongoing discriminations and subjugation. And Suaver Pickett has created this play in which we can chuckle at the difference of it all and the pathos of two young women sharing a pear, this exotic treat that was pilfered from a wealthy woman's garden and pausing about about how great this pear tastes as they eat bites out of it together. That sense of the far away juxtaposed by the eerily familiar. And there is some commentary at one point that starts to sound a little bit like Trump. There are other moments in which it feels like we are talking directly about incel culture and the manosphere of it all. It is all powerfully prescient stuff, but we get there gradually. And to begin with, tonally, we're in a very different place. And it sounds a little bit more like secondary school, high school girls having a conversation. One says to the other that she'd like to be mysterious, but she says, you told me I didn't have the bone structure to be mysterious. There's also a lot of subtle commentary, almost entirely positioned to be played for laughs, about the exposure of women's bodies as it was. There's a joke about one of the young women towards the beginning having washed her neck because she's anticipating the arrangement of an engagement to a local young man. Another character is scolded for having her stockings too low when they are practicing dances. There is much talk of men liking arms and men liking hands and being fascinated by the way in which women use their hands, because these are some of the few parts of the body that are actually exposed. And there's so much that you can read into about this sort of coiled spring impact of sexual puritanical. Conservatism. But that's a different conversation for another day. They have these other conversations about things that are happening in the market, about a young woman who has been beaten for talking back about things that are happening a couple of towns over. There is this one line that hits us very hard when they say, they say that the men are changing. And it doesn't take a genius to figure out one of the things that we may be really nodding to when we're talking about the abuses of a man in power against women, emboldening a certain type of male behavior throughout society. And we get the surest sense of the tense, uneasy direction in which this is all heading when, after this charming, light hearted introductory scene between these three friends, the delivery of the line he's arrested her about the king in regards to the Queen is suddenly pulse stopping and insistent and chilling. It's this immediate tonal shift that sends us off a theatrical diving board into the rest of this play, which I will continue to tell you about, including about who these characters are. But I think in order to do so I'm going to need to divulge a few spoilers. That's been your taste of 1536. If you want to hear more, stay with me. Let's keep talk.
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Mickey Jo
talking about it. So I think the real genius of the play is the lens through which we view this, because it would be one thing to write a play about Anne Boleyn, and it's quite another to write a play about these three young women hearing snippets of information and being able to see, even from their position in society, the effect that that is having, or even just the way in which it opens their eyes to the inequalities that have already existed. There is the occasional line that recurs in which they say something to the effect of, is this the way it's always going to be? And is this the way that it's always been? But let's talk about this central trio of female characters and who they are. They are all young women, a little younger perhaps, than Anne Boleyn is believed to have been when she was married to Henry viii. Critically, they are all around the age of courtship and engagement and arranged marriage and eligibility. Also, quite apart from the queen, in terms of their social status, these are all members of a serving class. One of them is a midwife. She remarks at the beginning that this is a job, a role that she inherited because her grandmother ch be a midwife, and therefore she was stuck with it. We see them performing tasks, meeting in the midst of their work days, always in this one spot in a field, the same field where romantic dalliances have occasionally taken place. Their names are Anna, Jane and Mariella, and it's Anna who we first encounter in a moment of passionate embrace. We come to find out that she is very concerned with her beauty, and she knows that she is appealing to the men of the town. She regards this sort of playfully at the beginning of the play, but to feel quite differently about it by the end, and both the actions of men and the perception of her in the village begin to have consequences for her. This is a play of steadily burning consequences, which for these women, eventually amount to a wildfire. Essentially, what's been happening here is that Anna, who is sexually liberal, has been having a premarital affair with a man named Richard. And when she is joined by her more conservative friend. Friend Jane, who has her ear proverbially pressed to her father's every word and is more traditional and who, she tells her is a little more plain, announces that she is engaged to a local man named Richard. We haven't yet been told that that's who that guy was, but if you're paying any kind of attention to Anna's face, you know it Immediately. It is no accident that these characters are named Anna and Jane before the heat gets turned up on the whole thing. It is for a while, a bit of a Jane Austen esque love triangle with the two women and this man and the woman who he has to marry out of obligation because she comes from good stock because there's an arrangement with her father. But more so than anything else, because Anna is not perceived as the type of girl that a man would marry, rather the type of girl who he would persuade to meet him by a tree in the middle of a field. And already Anna has defended the Queen's reputation on principle and in sort of immediate, subconscious solidarity. When Jane subsequently reveals the news of her engagement, we realize that Anna is immediately positioned as the other woman. And this becomes about a man passionately in love with a woman named Anna, but choosing to marry a woman named Jane. Later in the play, Jane repeats something which her now husband Richard has told her, saying that he has said the king ought to marry a simple, plain woman. Next, Anna then says spitefully to Jane, someone like you, you mean? And so the transition of, of Anne Boleyn to a Jane Seymour is exemplified through these women. The entire thing is allegorically realized through this very local little sex scandal. Meanwhile, you have Mariella, who spends the play moving between different difficult positions. She remains a mutual close friend to the other two women, whose relationship grows more tense as Jane marries Richard and as rumors begin to swirl throughout the town about Anna, with Jane further indoctrinated by her hypocritical husband and no longer willing to believe her friend. At the same time, in her professional life, Marielle is obliged to provide midwifery care to the wife of the man who she was desperately in love with, who chose to, but again sort of had no choice but to marry a woman other than her, in spite of the clearly ongoing feelings that he has for her. We encounter this man in conversation with Jane. He's just been out shooting hare in the fields. And it's the moment when we ask, and this has only been preempted by Anna making some sort of a remark about knowing that love is possible because of what happened with Mariella, that immediately gets squashed and she says she'd rather not talk about it. But when we meet this man later and we don't know who he is, when he simply asks, how is Mariella to Jane? And it hangs there for a split second, we know exactly what's happened here. That is good direction from Lindsay Turner. That is great direction. If I get to be as an audience member, this intuitive about every turn of the play before it happens. That's a thrilling ride to be on. Eventually, the problems in the lives of these women grow more complex. For Anna, this is an ongoing sexual dalliance with Richard. Even after she coyly attempts to end it shifts in his behavior that defy their previous rules of engagement, indicated to us as simply as a scene between the two of them, culminating in him grabbing her forearm and turning her around and taking a kiss rather than offering one. There is further sexual violence to come later played off stage, when two of the women are escaping, escaping momentarily from Jane and Richard's wedding. They find themselves in that familiar field, discuss a flirtation over chicken legs that was had between a local man and a another young woman who they don't care for very much. They then giggle about spotting the two of them together in a field. And we can tell brilliant writing, brilliant direction only from their facial expressions, that their perception of what's happening has shifted. That this is not a charming romantic dalliance in the middle of a wedding day. That this is an act of sexual violence. And we simply watch them see this and react to this. And it's one of the most intense and impactful moments of the entire play. The two of them are, we come to realize, watching another young woman, a young woman just like them, being raped from the vantage point of a tree that they carved their names into too long ago to remember. From this place of safety and innocence, they. They witness the terrors of the world. And this exact spot will promise more of that for them later on. Because every horror of historic femininity can be found within this play. We explore it all, we invoke it all, even if we don't need to write about it and talk about it in as many words. It's there. Later, there's a scene between Anna and Jane. It isn't a full admission on both of their parts, but Jane has found herself in a dissatisfying marriage in which she is being physically abused by her husband. She has a black eye. Anna is considering leaving. And then both of them are tearfully finding themselves a thousand miles emotionally from where we started. One final writing note before I move on and talk about the cast and creatives, which is that we never hear the name Anne Boleyn spoken. I don't believe until after she's dead, until after Mariella brings the news of her execution. Prior to that, she has simply been the Queen. And it's only after her beheading that she is afforded the courtesy of her own name. And at the same time, as we hear her name spoken, we also hear the sound of local men celebrating the pubs having been kept open so that they could celebrate this triumph for the king who has had his wife killed. A moment so thunderous it could easily be the play's conclusion. But the final twist of the thing is the full arrival of a thunderstorm. And without spoiling that for you in its entirety, I'm going to move on and tell you a little bit about the company and the creator. Creative.
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Mickey Jo
team. So I want to talk about the creative team to begin with and Lindsay Turn Turner's fantastic direction. Every single moment on the stage feels purposeful, even if it doesn't feel particularly at pace. There is this sensation of gaining pace throughout the thing, of the scenes getting shorter, of the tension rising so high it feels as though we can't possibly breathe in the Ambassador's Theatre. But there is always impetus, there is always direction. Every single character has, from the beginning of each scene to the end, regardless of what kind of a conversation it is, shifted in some way, been enlightened, evolved a little as a person, had their eyes uncomfortably opened to dangerous new realities. The way in which it's staged and the set design, I think, very much invokes the idea of this being a historic thing that we are viewing through a comparative modern lens. Max Jones is both the set and the costume designer. It's a detailed, sumptuous little world that they find themselves in, in this singular field. A lot of comings and goings written into the script which are handled in the direction very, very well. This, I think, is occasionally a quality of early career playwriting. I noticed the same thing in Mark Rosenblatt's Giant, where we have to find a way to try and justify certain people coming into contact and moving this person away so that this person can come back. And then it's going to be a scene between those two people. And essentially what we have here is this one field and different people arriving and leaving, leaving. In order to achieve this and in order to realize their reaction to the gradual news of what's happening to the Queen, we have time jumps and scene transitions between these different moments with a blackout, with lighting around the proscenium. The lighting design having been by Jack Knowles, who does fantastic work, particularly with this single screen backdrop that occasionally begins to blaze with a fire of righteous fury and occasionally burns red with terror and fear and masculine violence. The music of the scene transitions, though, I also thought, was really wonderful. These are the compositions and arrangements of Will Stewart in Ting Yingdong's sound design. And circling back to Max Jones's costume. I like that there is some indication of the difference in personality of each of these three women. Mariella, who is more of a dreamer, who is aspirational, who is still quietly holding out some hope for the love that she has lost. For Anna, who is unapologetically sensual, who is cognizant of the effect that her beauty has on the men around her. For Jane, who, even before she is married, is more conservative, is more traditional. But we notice it the most, I think, in Richard, whose attire shifts. I mean, the first time we see him, he's wearing a long shirt and his trousers are around his ankles. But gradually he gets sort of radicalized by the world in which he lives. And he has this entire sort of gaslighting, toxic arc where he tries to return to Anna and persuades her once more to be his mistress. Every time we see him, he is slightly more clothed, but slightly more buttoned up as well. We get an immediate sense from his arrival of the kind of man that he's turning into. But let's talk about these performances. And it is first and foremost a trio of sensational actresses leading this play in conversation with each other. They are Liv Hill as Jane, Sienna Kelly as Anna, and Tanya Reynolds as Mariella, each of them doing exemplary work. The evolution that they all get the chance to play from the beginning of 1536 through to the end is really stunning. Incredibly rewarding, you'd have to imagine, for an actor. And Sienna as Anna probably has the most prominent early material, as she is the first to really embrace the frustration and hopelessness of the times in which they live. In the first scene, she is proudly making her friends guess at which of her admirers might have gifted her this expensive bracelet. Later on, she is trying to maintain a front and save face when she is told in no uncertain terms, that she isn't the kind of woman who men would ask to marry. And so she is insisting that she is constantly met with marriage proposals that she chooses to reject. And as much pain and sorrow as she begins to portray on her own behalf when she is challenged by her lover, who she clearly has prevalent feelings for that she won't admit to. How many men have you slept with? And we truly find ourselves in the manosphere. She also heartbreakingly weeps for her friend when she returns to the field and sees Mariella with her former love, William, now married to another heavily pregnant woman whose baby she is imminently going to have to deliver. And she witnesses the two of them not in carnal embrace, but with his hand simply on the back of her neck and her silently putting her hand there to meet his. We see her wordlessly responding to this and weeping for her friend, knowing the significance of what it is that she stumbled onto next. Let's talk about Tanya as Mariella, because that's another really strong moment in the play. And again, where she gets to from where she started offering a lot of these sort of dryly comic lines to ending in a place of real hysteria. Tanya has been exciting in everything I have seen her do on stage. I think she's a really remarkable up and coming talent who we should be watching very intently. One of my favorite details about her performance is this knowing quality that she portrays, even when willfully evading the reality of their circumstances and saying, like. Like what should a king's marriage have to do with us? How should that affect us? She's also fatigued and world weary, but dares to dream. She shares a dream that she's had about a world in which there are no men. And again, initially played for a little laugh there. But as she expands on it and says, I think I would hear the birds more because I wouldn't be looking down as often. There would be less pain, There would be be less blood. It's a beautiful little pocket of a moment that could be taking place in the 16th century. It also wouldn't sound out of place yesterday. One of the real triumphs of all three performances is the care that you feel between them. And that's very interesting when we take a look at Liv Hill's performance as Jane, because she quite possibly has the most significant character arc over the course of the play. She is, to begin with, naive and a little bit of a punching bag in some ways. By the end, she is wielding the power that she realizes that she has in order to direct blame for events that have unfolded towards Anna and sort of label her as an adulterous woman and have her be killed, basically. And we get little clues into the path that she is taking. Earlier on, she is very quick to repeat rhetoric that she has heard about the Queen. It's Jane, I think, who says women don't need to be clever, they need to be good. Later, when they poke fun at her for attempting the expression I'm going to turn over my leaves rather than turning over a single individual new leaf. And she is full of pink faced indignation, we get the slightest sense of the power that she might actually hold within herself. And when she comes to return the expensive bracelet that Anna has given to her to Anna because she doesn't want to be thought of as a woman wearing jewelry purchased by another man, it's a very tense, redefining moment in their friendship. That reminded me a little of the moment when Kim Richards returns a bunny to Lisa Rin at the reunion of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. But that's a reference that either will mean a lot to you or nothing whatsoever. And Liv as Jane and the person that she becomes is blood chillingly terrifying by the end of this play. But so is Oliver Johnston as Richard. And the arc for his character towards violence and toxicity and masculinity feels right out of 2026 conversation. Especially towards the end when he has been sent out to come and find a character on behalf of the men of the town, when there's something of a witch hunt about a century before all of that was genuinely going to take place in Essex. His hypocrisy with Anna, his toing and froing and this bravado that he assumes and this man that he tries to amount to is brilliantly well played. Again, it's chilling, it's insidious, it's also full of weakness and flaw. Very good work with a little less to do in terms of the amount of time he spends on stage as well as the extent of his character's emotional journey. Is George Kemp as William, formerly in love with Mariella, subsequently married a different woman. There is such meaning, though, in every line that he delivers. And you can hear just years of pain and conflict and heartbreak in the few moments of romantic delivery that he has. And this connection between him and Tanya playing Mariella is electrifying on stage. So those then have been some of my thoughts about 1536. I can only hope that they were persuasive to you and that you have already. If you haven't already had the chance to see it. Bought yourself a ticket to go and see this extraordinary play in the West End. It is such an impactful piece of of writing. I think it's remarkable. I think Eva Pickett is this absolute genius who we are going to see incredible things from. I cannot wait to see more of her work on stage. I think the company are sensational. I wish there had been more space at the Olivier Awards so that each of these actresses could have been recognized for their wonderful performances. Truly, it is a gift that this is having further life. After its run at the Almeida. I think that there ought to be a screen adaptation of of this. I hope that this transfers subsequently and goes beyond the West End. I think it's really remarkable. We need to be talking about this play. We need to be seeing this play. Go and see this play so I don't have to keep telling you. And if you already have that, I would love to know what you thought. Share all of your thoughts about 1536 in the comments section down below. And thank you so much for listening to mine. I hope that you enjoyed if you did. You can find more of my reviews right here wherever you are. Seeing my face or hearing my voice and there will be many more coming soon. Make sure sure that you're subscribed. If you're watching here on YouTube with the notifications turned on. That way every time I post a new review or another theater themed video you will find out straight away. You can also follow on podcast platforms or if you want to stay update with everything I see on stage and everything I share online about it. Then you can sign up to my free weekly substack email newsletter at the link in the description as always, I have been Mickey Jo and I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have have a stagey day for 10 more seconds. I'm Mickey Jo Theatre. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a Stagey Day.
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Host: Mickey Jo (MickeyJoTheatre)
Episode: 1536 (Ambassadors Theatre, West End) - ★★★★★ REVIEW
Date: May 17, 2026
In this episode, Mickey Jo delivers an enthusiastic and in-depth review of "1536", Eva Pickett's incendiary play currently running at the Ambassadors Theatre in London's West End. Having missed the play's sold-out 2025 world premiere at the Almeida Theatre, Mickey Jo approaches this West End transfer with high expectations—and finds them thoroughly exceeded, hailing the show as "blazingly good" and "extraordinary on arrival." The review oscillates between spoiler-free impressions, detailed plot and character analysis, and a full appraisal of the cast and creative team, all while situating "1536" in the urgent context of feminist historical and contemporary struggle.
"When it came time after the show to board my actual train, I was still breathless from the end of this piece of theatre. This was extraordinary on arrival." (01:28)
"You start to wonder whether you will be able to notice extraordinary when you encounter it again. And then you do, and you realize your fears were unfounded because it just explodes within you." (01:40)
"If you are a woman and/or have ever met or cared about women, but also especially if you explicitly don't care about women—everyone really has to go and see this play." (02:41)
"It doesn't actually begin with the three women having a conversation in the field. Instead, it opens with an act of carnal encounter in a tree...a hedonistic, reckless and passionate encounter between two characters who, by the end of the play, will have evolved significantly." (03:50)
"They have to wait for somebody's father to come back from London with news...indicative of the way that this news would have filtered out steadily to the regions at that time." (07:17)
"A lot of the early comedy of the play comes from transposing some modern values and sensibilities onto a historic setting." (09:18)
This includes conversations about "French fashion", neck-washing before courting, and jokes on the exposure of women's bodies—delicate satire with a threatening edge.
"There's a sense of contemporary, deliberately anachronistic dialogue...facilitating an understanding of the direct comparison between then and now." (09:44)
"It is no accident that these characters are named Anna and Jane before the heat gets turned up on the whole thing. It is...a Jane Austen-esque love triangle...but more than anything else, because Anna is not perceived as the type of girl that a man would marry, rather the type of girl who he would persuade to meet him by a tree." (15:55)
"If enough people did, we could actually incite revolution. But that's a proposal for another day." (02:55)
"The real genius...is the lens—writing about three young women hearing snippets of information and being able to see, even from their position in society, the effect that is having." (14:37)
"There is the occasional line that recurs: Is this the way it's always going to be? And is this the way that it's always been?" (14:50)
"Every horror of historic femininity can be found within this play...we invoke it all, even if we don't need to write about it and talk about it in as many words. It's there." (18:48)
"We never hear the name Anne Boleyn...until after she's dead...she has simply been the Queen. And it's only after her beheading that she is afforded the courtesy of her own name." (21:20)
"Every single moment on stage feels purposeful...scenes get shorter, tension rises...every character is enlightened, evolved, had their eyes uncomfortably opened to dangerous new realities." (23:21)
"Lighting design by Jack Knowles...screen backdrop blazes with fire of righteous fury, burns red with terror and fear and masculine violence. Music by Will Stewart, sound design by Ting Yingdong—really wonderful." (24:44)
"His arc towards violence and toxicity and masculinity feels right out of 2026 conversation...chilling, insidious, and full of weakness and flaw." (29:47)
Mickey Jo concludes with the view that "1536" is a necessary, galvanizing piece of theatre—courageous, sharply relevant, and fiercely performed. He wishes for a screen adaptation, broader recognition for the cast, and implores audiences to "go and see this play so I don't have to keep telling you." The review lifts Eva Pickett as "an absolute genius," with expectations for even greater things to come.
“If you already have [seen it], I would love to know what you thought. Share all of your thoughts about 1536 in the comments section down below. And thank you so much for listening to mine.” (33:49)
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Summary prepared for listeners who missed the episode or want a structured overview of Mickey Jo’s impassioned review of "1536".