Review by Simon Jenner, May 23rd 2025
So, what if two people were born on the same day, February 12th 1809; in the same place: Shrewsbury, Shropshire? And grow up together. The difference: one is educated at Cambridge and the other at form school. And… one’s a man and the other a woman who could never have gone to Cambridge for another 40 years. Featuring Olivia Post, Saskia Wesnigk-Wood’s Darwin’s Cleaner plays at the Unitarian, also directed by her, till 25th May.
Olivia Post. Photo Credit: Saskia Wesnigk-Wood
Post is both enormously affecting as Henrietta ‘Hen’ Brown and a shapeshifting narrator. Donning a gallimaufry of smocks, hats, aprons and even different pin-dresses she drops a tray, then leads us back through the course of her life that led to that drop.
It’s entwined with Charles Darwin, the man credited with the theory of evolution. Post riffles through subtle shadings of maturity, and inflections of Hen’s own dawning intellect. For in one way she moves far more into the future than her swaddling-buddy (as we discover). There’s an array of props too: boxes, period chests and towels as well as samples.
The opening is wrought in six powerful quatrains: “I need to scrub these places clean/
I need to make the truth unseen.” It builds:
I scrub my guilt away away
I scrub away the dirt, the clay,
the dust, the beastly feathers, too
I scrub away the me, the you.
And ends in a mingled yarn of light and loss: “It is a dream of would and might/My life has been so dark so bright.”
Olivia Post. Photo Credit: Saskia Wesnigk-Wood
Wesnigk-Wood’s vision is no simple monologue. A male voice intones. Henrietta Brown is declared the subject of an internal experiment, literally an indexed “Specimen”, her life sequenced like the butterflies she dusts: except alive. In iterations of numbers, and years of her life, they act like chronological leaps and Hen’s insidious sense of being whittled into a subject. As well she might. Brian Gulland’s pre-recorded voice intones Darwin’s with persuasively clinical RP. Gulland’s also performs on keyboards. Roy Weard provides technical support with sound FX; Cliff providing lighting support.
Born Henrietta Telford, Hen’s mother wet-nursed Charles Darwin himself (a delight of towel-flipping into a swaddled pair) as well as her daughter: so their DNA is somehow linked. Hen grows up bright and probing, but under-educated. Whilst the young Charles proves a duffer at school, more interested in hunting, shooting and fishing (which he later enjoyed with his father-in-law, Josiah Wedgwood no less), he slowly turns whilst at Cambridge into a naturalist: drifting through medicine, theology, and natural sciences (still a degree there). And becomes a gentleman naturalist on the Beagle. The rest is, naturally, history.
Hen meanwhile grows up alongside Charles, and their paths diverge from his time at Cambridge from 1827; and aboard the Beagle 1831-36. Hen marries, but tragedy strikes twice. Indeed just as Darwin returns, both of them aged 24. Now as Darwin’s cleaner and maid, Hen enters the notoriously dusty household, where Darwin’s cousin Emma, birthing 10 children, shares her husband’s contempt for tidiness and order. Hen has her work cut out in dust clouds.
“They are everywhere: Flies, feathers, twigs, petals, creatures, crawling with dust, mites, maggots. Festering on skin, in soil, under leaves. Fascinating? Festering!… poor butterflies, beetles, barnacles. Killed in the name of science. Gutted, fumigated, prepared. Counted, spread, pinned. Analysed.”
But Hen also finds the world interpreted to her in lightning shafts of cutting-edge theory and knowledge. Not that she can accept monkeys as relatives. No matter, they’re a branch. Like a tree? No, we’re from the apes. So that’s clear.
Olivia Post. Photo Credit: Saskia Wesnigk-Wood
Olivia Post. Photo Credit: Peter Williams
Post shades in brief moments of tenderness, the dependence of the Darwins on Hen goes for little. But when she goes to commemorate the death of one of their children, at a tree, she finds Charles there too. A moment of recognition flickers between them.
It’s Hen’s midwifery skills delivering the couple’s fifth child (Henrietta) where Charles almost takes on a measure of humanity. Especially as he’s always as ill as his wife. And Hen’s mother’s ensuring she can read makes a different impression:
“He saw me differently after that, let me help in his study more. I have asked him a hundred questions, he just says, “Count, Hen, count and write. You write well.”… I doubt he realises how much I am learning… I like to pretend to clean the globe of the world, but instead I travel on it to far away places.”
And Charles finds Hen a quick, ready learner, though of course never considers Hen outside her allotted role. Post wittily sings ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ where the writer talks of ordering the estate of rich and poor. Nevertheless, it’s from a sample of the rich Darwin, that Hen contracts Scarlet fever, which weakens her forever.
During the 1850s though, meeting women activists transforms Hen. She litanises transportation for those stealing to live. And, as her own health takes a knock, Hen recognises the ordering of estates makes you ill. It kills you. In their different ways Hen and Charles suffer: and both move away from the church. Post’s run of accents is particularly effective here. And these encounters and awakenings lead up to that tray somehow. Is it a eureka moment of its own?
Olivia Post. Photo Credit:Peter Williams
Olivia Post. Photo Credit: Peter Williams
This is quietly groundbreaking work, with real potential. There’s moments that might integrate further. The ingenious ‘Specimen’ status of Hen might point into a narrative. Currently it’s an elegant, clarifying conceit and works very well, though it hangs outside the Victorian; like a John Fowles commentary. A period inflection might help. The Unitarian’s lighting is either off or on; there’s no opportunity for shading, thus aiding the supremely hardworking Post. Later in this tour, there’ll be opportunities. Moments of pace might vary more.
As presented this has remarkable potential in other mediums. Both audio/radio and TV suggest this could be a compelling tool for inquiring not only the origin of species, but the origins of feminism and education. All Victorian topics that Darwin’s contemporaries from Ada Lovelace, Mary Somerville and John Stuart Mill were tackling. Wesnigk-Wood’s taken a far more imaginative direction: and thrust a gifted woman into the chains of unlearning and class oppression; and measured a life’s frustration in an hour. Compelling, a show that may touch Fringe greatness.
A Swanwing Production, it plays on 24th at 19.00 and the 25th at 15.00 before touring.
Olivia Post. Photo Credit: Peter Williams
