Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast Samantha Alton.
We raise the idea of heroism up to the point where we often forget the story that inspired such feelings of gratitude in the first place, we see the plinth with their name attached, the statue put up by a grateful populace, and in time the only ones who pay attention to the image, the figure on the pedestal, is the day tripper and the pigeons who survey humanity with the bird-like contempt we deserve.
The definition of hero and the way we venerate such people who have given something back to their community is lop-sided, top-heavy perhaps with the notion of placing the figure of him into history, the soldier, the former politician, the musician, anybody it seems but the woman who deserves the promotion of their ideals and achievements just as equally and with the same solemnity.
The story of Catherine Wilkinson (nee Seaward) may well pass you by, understandable perhaps but questionable in an age where we salute such strength in women, but for those who have seen the statue of the heroine who became known as the Saint of the Slums, the sheer force of nature that inhabited this particular Liverpool resident, who survived the sinking of the ship she sailed into the city upon, which claimed the lives of her father and her baby sister, the social damage sought by Georgian and Victorian values in which indentured children were trapped in forced labour and which eventually took her mother’s life as she succumbed to the madness of depression at the thought of losing all her family, then perhaps for those that have taken time to see Kitty: Queen of the Washhouse.
It is to the foresight of Catherine Wilkinson that the disease that ravaged Asia and Europe on three separate occasions during the first part of the 19th Century, Cholera, was for the least part stemmed and understood to be spread by the sickening conditions in which the poor and destitute were kept by an uncaring society.
To portray such a woman on stage takes more than strength, it insists upon belief, a story from the past must be portrayed with genuine exposure, with sympathy, and above all with truth in the actor’s heart. A marbled heroine brought to life by a woman of acting stature, one who has taken the monologue written as a statement of openness, of delving to the past with a sense of the absolute pursuit of truth, and for Samantha Alton, it is a part that makes an audience’s heart leap.
There is no greater feeling for a gathered crowd to know that they are not only being given an extraordinary performance, but they are being shown history as it should be told, the stories of the seemingly ordinary honestly presented and with pride; for it is pride, local and national gratification that we hold figures such as Catherine Wilkinson up as heroes, with the emphasis firmly on the Her.
Ian D. Hall