RashDash’s new theatre production honours the pre-Raphaelite by focusing on her own art and poetry – and shifting from tragedy into comedy
Wan, pale, tragic. Elizabeth “Lizzie” Siddal is remembered for how she was portrayed by the 19th-century men who saw her as their muse: artists Walter Deverell, her husband Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and most famously John Everett Millais, who pictured her as his ethereal, drowned Ophelia. But Siddal was an artist in her own right, and her depiction of her own image was in stark contrast to those of these men.
“When I think of her paintings, I think about her self-portrait in comparison with the way they drew her skin and her face,” says Abbi Greenland, one third of theatre company RashDash, who are retelling Siddal’s story on stage with comedy and songs. “These open features and heavy lids and perfect palette. And the way she drew herself, as pointy and poky and in saturated colours.” “And frowning,” says Becky Wilkie, another third of the company, the musician of the trio. “And frowning!” Greenland echoes. “The difference between this ill woman and this pointy, angry woman she feels like she is in her own art.”