Title: The Wife of Willesden
Author: Zadie Smith
Genre: Stage Play
ISBN: 978-0241471968
Publisher: Hamish Hamilton
Publication Date: 4th November 2021
Publisher Description:
'Married five times. Mother. Lover. Aunt. Friend.
She plays many roles round here. And never
Scared to tell the whole of her truth, whether
Or not anyone wants to hear it. Wife
Of Willesden: pissed enough to tell her life
Story to whoever has ears and eyes . . .'
Zadie Smith's first time writing for the stage, The Wife of Willesden is a riotous twenty-first century translation of Geoffrey Chaucer's classic The Wife of Bath's Prologue, brought to glorious life on the Kilburn High Road.
Commissioned to celebrate Brent's year as Borough of Culture 2020, The Wife of Willesden ran at the Kiln Theatre, London from November 2021 to January 2022.Commissioned to celebrate Brent's year as Borough of Culture 2020, The Wife of Willesden ran at the Kiln Theatre, London from November 2021 to January 2022.
Zadie Smith is the author of the novels White Teeth, The Autograph Man, On Beauty, NW, Swing Time and The Fraud; as well as a novella, The Embassy of Cambodia; three collections of essays, Changing My Mind, Feel Free and Intimations; a collection of short stories, Grand Union; and the play, The Wife of Willesden, adapted from Chaucer. She is also the editor of The Book of Other People. Zadie Smith was born in north-west London, where she still lives.
Literary Atelier Review: Geoffrey Chaucer's The Wife of Bath was the first text I was introduced to for my A Level English Literary course. From the moment I began reading it I was mesmerised by this new language, from an era long past, which told a story closer to a raunchy soap opera. I was enthralled.
Around the same time I was first reading Chaucer there was a lot of exciting buzz around a cool new British author called Zadie Smith. Her debut novel White Teeth was creating a lot of excitement and weirdly I already knew who she was because she had been an ambassador for the Cambridge University college I had applied to and been called to interview at that same year.
Like so many lovers of post-modern British literary fiction I love Zadie Smith's work. In fact I absolutely adore Zadie Smith. I have read almost everything she has ever published and am fortunate enough to (thanks in part to my beloved husband's great gift buying) to own all of her novels in signed first edition copies. A dream!
Thus when I heard Smith was writing her first ever stage play, an updated version of The Wife of Bath, set this time in her north west London neighbourhood of Willesden, I knew I had to get tickets. Unfortunately the global lockdown and Germany's very strict travel rules meant I missed the play live on stage. Thanks to my National Theatre at Home subscription I was able to watch it later from the comfort of my own home and picked up a copy of the play text.
True to the original text, Zadie Smith's Wife is bawdy, chatty, confident, and indomitable. The play is set in a pub in Willesden and the roll call of characters, in particular the Wife's numerous husbands are just as entertaining as they were in the late Middle Ages. If you are a person who is unfamiliar with Chaucer's work (or Zadie Smith's) this stage play is an excellent introduction which I believe will lead you to exploring the work of both of these brilliant English authors further.