Review: Zadie Smith’s ‘The Wife of Willesden’ Brings Chaucer Loudly to London

It was strange and also a thrill, as a longtime fan of BBC radio soap The Archers living in New York, to find the much-missed Denise in Brooklyn the other evening, radically transformed and yet in some ways still very Denise-ish. On air, Denise, efficient and direct administrator of a veterinary practice who we wish would just get it together with colleague Alistair, has been absent for some time; her son Paul has instead moved to the fictional English rural hamlet of Ambridge and, just like his mother, is a dab hand at keeping Alistair and fellow vet Jakob in line.

To explain her continued absence, we learned recently that Denise is now so in demand as an administrator of veterinary practices that she has been parachuted into others to lick them into shape. We miss her. In reality, her portrayer Clare Perkins has found another beguiling, commanding authority figure to inhabit, in superstar novelist Zadie Smith’s debut play—really, more accurately, a dramatic experience—The Wife of Willesden (BAM, to April 16), an adaptation of Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath set in contemporary Kilburn, north west London, where Smith herself grew up and the setting of her novels, White Teeth and NW.

The play, produced in association with A.R.T., was first performed in 2021 at the neighborhood’s Kiln Theatre where Smith herself took acting classes as a child, as part of the London borough of Brent’s designation as the capital’s 2020 “London Borough of Culture.” On every level it rings as a very personal celebration of the polyphony, energy and diversity of Smith’s locale.

Read more at The Daily Beast.