wrench women out of the shadows
Across five centuries, the private fears that women share with one another in quiet rooms have remained remarkably unchanged — and a new West End play, 1536, makes that continuity impossible to ignore. Written by debut playwright Ava Pickett and backed by actor Margot Robbie, the production imagines three working-class women in Tudor Essex watching Anne Boleyn's downfall and recognising, in it, the fragility of their own lives. By refusing to centre kings and courts, the play recovers voices history never recorded, holding them up as a mirror to the present.
- Five hundred years of women's unrecorded fear is suddenly, uncomfortably visible on a West End stage.
- The play unsettles by insisting that gendered violence, slut-shaming, and mob mentality are not relics of the past but live conditions of the present.
- Margot Robbie's early championing of an unproduced script helped carry it from the Almeida to the Ambassadors Theatre, where critics are calling its three leads stars in the making.
- A BBC commission for an eight-part series signals that the industry is catching up to what audiences already sense: complex, ordinary female stories have long been overdue.
- Even as the play navigates dark terrain, its sustained humour keeps audiences laughing until the final five minutes — making the weight of what they've witnessed land all the harder.
In the spring of 1536, as Anne Boleyn's execution loomed over England, three ordinary women sat in an Essex cottage, drinking and talking. They were not courtiers. They were working-class people watching a queen fall and wondering what it meant for their own fragile lives. That imagined scene is the beating heart of 1536, now playing in London's West End with the backing of Margot Robbie.
Playwright Ava Pickett, 32, began not with historical research but with something closer to home: conversations with friends about violence against women, about ambient fear, about what women tell each other when no one else is listening. She wanted characters who were not heroic or world-changing — just three normal women watching misogyny rise around them like a tide. The Tudor setting became a mirror for something timeless: the enduring fragility of women's safety and autonomy.
Robbie encountered the script before it had any momentum and was immediately gripped. "The conversations these women have are the same ones that women now are having," she told the BBC. That sense of recognition — of seeing yourself in a story set five centuries ago — is precisely what Pickett was after. The play transferred from the Almeida to the Ambassadors Theatre and earned four stars from critics, who praised leads Liv Hill, Siena Kelly, and Tanya Reynolds as stars in the making.
What distinguishes 1536 from most Tudor dramas is its deliberate refusal to centre power. It looks instead at women who left no trace in the historical record — whose thoughts and fears were never written down. Pickett frames this as an act of recovery, an effort to "wrench women out of the shadows." The play's success has already prompted a BBC commission for an eight-part series adaptation, and Pickett is now co-writing Baz Luhrmann's forthcoming Joan of Arc film.
Yet perhaps the most telling measure of the play's achievement is what happens in audiences after the lights come up. Despite its dark currents — gendered hypocrisy, misinformation, mob mentality — humour runs through it until the very last minutes, making the final weight land all the harder. Robbie says it is "thought-provoking and fun at the same time. It doesn't feel like homework, but you want to talk to your friends about it afterwards." That impulse to talk, to recognise your own conversations reflected back across five centuries, may be what endures longest.
In the spring of 1536, as whispers of Anne Boleyn's impending execution rippled through England, three women sat in an Essex cottage drinking and talking. They were not courtiers or ladies-in-waiting. They were ordinary people, watching a queen fall and wondering what it meant for their own precarious lives. That scene—imagined but grounded in the texture of real working-class existence—forms the beating heart of 1536, a play that has just arrived in London's West End with the backing of actor Margot Robbie.
The play was written by Ava Pickett, a 32-year-old making her debut as a playwright. It began not with historical research but with something more immediate: conversations Pickett was having with her own friends about violence against women, about the ambient fear that shapes women's private lives, about the things women tell each other late at night when no one else is listening. She wanted to write characters who were not heroic or world-changing, but simply three normal women watching misogyny rise around them like a tide. The historical setting—the downfall of a queen—became a mirror for something timeless: the way women's safety and autonomy have always been fragile, always contested, always subject to the whims of power.
Robbie encountered the script years ago, before it was produced, before it had any momentum. She was told she would be obsessed with it. She was. "The conversations these women have are the same ones that women now are having," she told the BBC. "I feel like I'm friends with these women and I know them." That recognition—that sense of seeing yourself in a story set five centuries ago—is precisely what Pickett was after. The play opened at the Almeida Theatre in London last year and has now transferred to the Ambassadors Theatre in the West End. It received four stars from critics, who noted that the three actors at its center—Liv Hill, Siena Kelly, and Tanya Reynolds—are "stars in the making."
What makes 1536 distinctive in the landscape of Tudor dramas is its refusal to center power. Most historical plays about this period focus on the court, on the machinations of kings and queens, on the grand gestures that reshape nations. This play looks away from all that. It looks at the women who were never recorded, whose names do not appear in chronicles, whose thoughts and fears left no trace. Reynolds, one of the three leads, points out that there is almost no historical record of ordinary people from the 1530s—almost nothing survives of what they actually thought or felt. "But I think they probably would have been a lot like the women in the play," she says. Pickett frames this as an act of recovery: "A huge amount is learned about re-examining events and history through the female gaze, particularly women who weren't of note. These are everyday working-class women living on the edge of a country and it's incredibly important we try and wrench women out of the shadows."
The play's success has already triggered a BBC commission for an eight-part drama series adaptation. Pickett is also now co-writing Baz Luhrmann's forthcoming Joan of Arc film, Jehanne d'Arc. But what's perhaps more significant than the industry momentum is what audiences are saying about the experience of watching the play. Liv Hill, who studied history in school and found it tedious and remote, says the play completely changed how she thinks about the past. "This play makes the Tudor era feel so relevant and relatable because these girls could be girls from 2026." The four-star review noted that 1536 is "both an easy and a deeply unsettling watch," and that it illuminates how "we are still grappling with many of the same issues: gendered hypocrisy, slut-shaming, the corrosive danger of misinformation and mob mentality."
What's striking is that despite these darker currents running through the play, humor remains woven throughout. Robbie says audiences will be surprised by how much they laugh. "Considering the things happening, to keep the humour throughout is an incredible feat. Up until the last five minutes, you're laughing the whole way through." Pickett emphasizes that she hopes audiences will feel empathy for all three women—that they will recognize them not as historical curiosities but as people. Both she and Robbie note that audiences increasingly want more layered, complex female characters on stage, characters who are allowed to be funny and frightened and ordinary all at once. The play manages to be, as Robbie puts it, "thought-provoking and fun at the same time. It doesn't feel like homework, but it's also nourishing and you want to talk to your friends about it afterwards." That impulse to talk—to process, to recognize yourself in the story, to see your own conversations reflected back at you across five centuries—may be the play's most enduring achievement.
Citas Notables
The conversations these women have are the same ones that women now are having. I feel like I'm friends with these women and I know them.— Margot Robbie
These are everyday working-class women living on the edge of a country and it's incredibly important we try and wrench women out of the shadows.— Ava Pickett
La Conversación del Hearth Otra perspectiva de la historia
Why does a story about 1536 feel urgent right now, in 2026?
Because the women in the play aren't debating whether women deserve rights. They're just trying to survive in a world that's becoming more hostile to them. That's not a historical problem. That's something women are living through now.
But isn't there a risk that setting it in the past lets audiences feel safe—like it's about "back then," not about us?
That's exactly what the play refuses to do. The moment you recognize yourself in these women, that distance collapses. You're not watching history. You're watching your friends.
The writer drew this from conversations with her own friends. What was she hearing that made her want to turn it into a play?
Fear. Specifically, the private fear that women share with each other but don't always say out loud. The sense that the ground is shifting, that things are becoming less safe. She wanted to give that feeling a stage.
Why focus on working-class women instead of the court?
Because the court gets all the attention. The queens, the politics, the power plays—that's the story everyone knows. But what about the women who had no power at all? What were they thinking? What were they afraid of? That's the untold story.
The play has humor running through it. How does that work when the subject matter is so dark?
It works because that's how real women actually talk. You can be terrified and funny at the same time. You can laugh with your friends about something that's also genuinely frightening. The play trusts that complexity.