The Wife of Willesden review: Zadie Smith’s witty take on Chaucer pulls its punches

Zadie Smith’s first play begins with a personal introduction from the writer herself (as hilariously impersonated on stage by Crystal Condie). The award-winning novelist admits that she’s a bit nervous about putting her native Willesden on stage, and about pissing off its residents, before offering apologies for her literary output to date. Her self-deprecation isn’t necessary: true to form, the characters she draws here feel rich and real. But perhaps her approach to source material, Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath’s Tale, could have done with a bit more boldness.

This story centres on Alvita, a woman who’s worn out five husbands, who yells “I demand pleasure!” to the heavens, who’s proud of the control she fights to exercise over men. Clare Perkins’ inspired performance makes her leap off the page; it feels somewhere between a stand-up gig and a raucous party commandeered by its very charismatic host.

Her narration of a life spent at war with her five successive husbands is often fascinating: after all, this is a tale for the ages. But Smith clings too closely to this well-loved literary text, letting its contours stop her play taking on a life of its own. Yes, she sets it in a 21st-century local pub, which Robert Jones’s set design recreates with a gorgeous plushy theatricality, with gleaming ranks of bottles and ornate red curtains. And there are some witty 21st-century London updates – “jollof” rhymes with “slag off” here.

But fundamentally, this is Chaucer’s show, and that means many of the passages have a heady, incongruous reek of the 14th century: entirely heterosexual, confined by marriage, and vigorously rebelling against a world where women were seen as property. One of the opening debates centres on whether it’s acceptable for women to enjoy sex within marriage, drawing on the authorities of God, St Paul and the wittily added Nelson Mandela; the pub landlord’s brass tray is repurposed as a halo when these holy authorities make an appearance. Smith contextualises this debate by setting it within a devout Christian community but it still feels pretty arcane when debates over women’s sexuality and pleasure have advanced so much over 600 years.

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The close adherence to Chaucer’s original also makes this a strangely structured evening: it begins with a wordy, if fascinating prologue that culminates in a pageant-esque story just as it threatens to outstay its welcome. Kiln Theatre artistic director Indhu Rubasingham stages this text in inspired style, constantly fighting against its leanings towards stasis by injecting dance breaks and bursts of physical humour (the moment where all five of Alvita’s husbands twerk for her amusement is a disturbing comic masterpiece).

This is a text that asks, long before the cheesy 2000 movie of the same name, what women want. The Wife of Willesden feels like a missed opportunity to formulate 21st century answers to that question, and to create something as iconoclastic as Chaucer’s original once was. But even if it sometimes stutters rather than yells, it’s still a witty, strange and thoughtful reimagining of an unforgettable narrative of female sexual power.

‘The Wife of Willesden’ runs at the Kiln Theatre until 15 January 2022