First performed at the Brighton Fringe 2025
Olivia Post as Darwin’s Cleaner, photo by Roy Weard
Listen here for an interview with Saskia about the inspiration for this play:
NOW TOURING:
Wednesday September 17th at 7pm at Eastbourne Library. Tickets are FREE
Friday Sept. 19th at 3pm we were at the Etcetera Theatre Camden above the Oxford Arms, 265 Camden High St, London NW1 7BU.
Sunday October 5th at 5.30 pm we performed at Faversham Fringe.
Saturday November 8th at 2.30pm we shall be in The Stables Theatre and Arts Centre in Hastings.
If you would like to invite our “groundbreaking work with the enormously affecting Olivia Post” (FringeReview) to your venue, please get in touch with SaskiaWesnigk AT gmail.com
Dr Simon Jenner wrote in View from the Gods and Fringe Review: “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 has 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.” https://viewfromthegods.co.uk/2025/05/24/saskia-wesnigk-wood-darwins-cleaner-unitarian-brighton/
Olivia Post as
Darwin’s Cleaner
written and directed by Saskia Wesnigk-Wood
3 performances at Brighton’s Unitarian Church May 2025
Imagine what a woman’s life was like if she was born in 1809 as a servant’s daughter. They call her Hen and decide, as she is ‘merely a girl’, she will at least be useful. But then… there is another child born that day, in the same house, and he is the master’s son: the extraordinary Charles Darwin!
Audience Review: “Hen’ is thoughtfully, profoundly and expertly portrayed by Olivia Post as a ‘constructed’ woman of her time, facing significant joys and sorrows as a result of her birth into the working classes, her gender, her sadness at child loss, widowhood and her subsequent vulnerability and dependence on others for work, security and housing.”
Behind a great man, as the saying goes, stands a great woman – why not a great servant? Hen was there from the start, Charles’s playmate and friend, observing his shenanigans as a wayward youngster, eventually becoming his maid, assistant and family factotum.
We meet Hen when she has had enough of the mess and the carcasses, the flesh eating plants and the pinned butterflies. A woman can only put up with so much, and life has thrown a lot at our resilient and loving Henrietta Brown. Watch Hen dishing the dirt on the Darwins and finding her own way as the world for Victorian women begins to change.
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2025 – Brighton Fringe – Unitarian Church
https://www.brightonfringe.org/events/the-angel-of-death-will-see-you-now/
Adam Onyett as Dex Machina and Cathy Cardin as The Angel of Death
Pixie Dhel (Angel understudy) and James Mannion as James
After a bungled mugging leaves him teetering on the brink of the great beyond, a hapless teacher finds himself face-to-face with the Angel of Death – a quizmaster with a twisted sense of humour, and our teacher’s fate is the grand prize. The catch? The audience is part of the game. Can you help him outwit the Angel and escape the mysterious allure of Death’s door?
Brighton’s very own rock opera trailblazers, Trim Tab Productions, return to the Fringe with their third and most audacious show yet. Combining electrifying live music, razor-sharp dark comedy and an unmissable dose of interactive silliness, this is a theatrical experience like no other. Get ready to laugh, quiz, and rock out as though your life depends on it – because it very well might…
Written by James Mannion, music by James and the Band, directed by Saskia Wesnigk-Wood
5 star Review by Peter Allinson Brighton and Hove news: “This performance has been specifically designed to fit in this iconic Brighton venue, using the space effectively and involving the audience throughout. The songs are delivered with a real focus which adds to the dramatic tension, showing a huge commitment to the script and the structure of the work. Written by James Mannion and directed by Saskia Wesnigk-Wood, this is an accomplished and stylish piece that demonstrates the high the level of performance that can be within the Brighton Fringe.”
5 star review by Theater in Brighton, Sascha Cooper: “Mannion teamed up with local Theatre Director Saskia Wesnigk-Wood to create an experience that is beyond your normal musical. When we arrived at the venue, waiting to go in, we were treated to a welcoming alternative choir called Women of Note, who also took on the wyrd Sisters of Mercy. The musical helpers from above and the strange creatures who looked after us as we went in. Their voices were hauntingly dramatic with a dark comedy element to them as they not only explored the idea of death being a new beginning, but set the wheels in motion with thinking about the waiting room being like an odd gameshow where you were put on the spot. Sure enough, we were invited to take part in the games in a way that was engaging and comfortable and we loved the different answers that came out in the quiz rounds as the show progressed.”
Listen to the latest podcast of Saskia’s short radio plays
‘Not Drowning’ and ‘Steven is Gone’ https://www.buzzsprout.com/1854669/10535258
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1854669/9260352
