Most first loves end with a few tears and a shoebox of letters at the back of the wardrobe. Liz Hicklin’s ended with a letter from her boyfriend’s mother, breaking the news that her son had married someone else and was heading to America. The boyfriend was Ted Hughes. The someone else was Sylvia Plath.
A member of the nonagenarian club, Hicklin’s first play, Sylvia Plath Stole My Boyfriend is co-written with and directed by ABC radio presenter Jacinta Parsons. Running from the 15 to 18 October, it brings a burst of colour to the final days of the Melbourne Fringe Festival.
On the eve of opening night, Hicklin is all enthusiasm. ‘It has been an eye-opening experience,’ she tells ArtsHub. ‘This has been incredible to work with such a big group of talented women on my first piece of theatre.’
Like any debut, it came with a few nerves. ‘I think I had what they call the wobbles a couple of weeks ago,’ she says. ‘I have heard this is normal. But I was nervous that I wouldn’t be able to pull this off.’
Those wobbles have since steadied. Now, the only thing left to do is spin the wheel and see how audiences respond – and spin the wheel is no figure of speech.
Sylvia Plath Stole My Boyfriend – quick links
An inner game show
The 50-minute play is staged as a game show, an idea that came from Parsons. Former Sale of the Century announcer Pete Smith, now 87, lends his famous voice as Hicklin’s inner critic, while co-director Sarah Sutherland plays Plath as the sequinned prize presenter in the gift shop round..
‘Pete Smith plays the voice in my head,’ Hicklin says. ‘I had no idea how that would work, but he is wonderful. It brings an absurdity that I am beginning to get on board with.’
The play follows Hicklin from a heady northern love affair to the far side of the world, asking what stays with us when someone leaves. And though the format might sound like a game of chance, the question at the heart of the show is a serious one.
‘Jacinta would say one thing and I would say another,’ she says. ‘For me, the play is about the impact that one person can have on your life, how I was changed by my relationship with Ted Hughes, and how, now, when I look back, I can see how much it shaped me.’
As for the title, it’s every bit as cheeky as it sounds. ‘We just thought it was fun,’ Hicklin quips. ‘We didn’t want to focus too much on my age. I’m just making a show about my life, and Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes just happen to be a part of it.’
The Ted Hughes connection
So, did Sylvia Plath really steal her boyfriend? ‘It’s true. I was the girlfriend of Ted just before Sylvia,’ Hicklin says, before softening. ‘That she stole him might be a stretch, but her life and her incredible work has always been so interesting to me, because we had this connection through history.’
If anything, Hicklin is one of Plath’s champions. ‘I have always deeply admired her. She is brilliant, and I think they became who they did because they found each other at that moment.’
Before he was Poet Laureate, Ted Hughes was a 24-year-old Cambridge student with more talent than money. Hicklin, who grew up across the Pennines, recognised a kindred spirit.
‘We came from the same part of the UK,’ she recalls. ‘I was from Manchester and he was originally from Mytholmroyd, a town in Yorkshire. And while he was at Cambridge, we shared an understanding.’ Hicklin grew close to his family and spent long stretches with them at their home in Heptonstall.
And the meet-cute? That’s strictly for ticket-holders. ‘We tell that story in the play,’ she says.
‘It begins “It struck like a bolt of lightning” because that’s how I feel. It was a huge moment in my life. Ted was very charismatic.’
Hicklin also had a ringside seat for literary history. ‘There are a couple of Ted’s famous poems that I was present for,’ she says. She names The Thought Fox, now a fixture of school syllabuses, and his portrait of a local character called Dick Straight Up.
Picking up the pieces
When they were apart, the romance played out on paper, with Ted writing to her regularly. So were his letters funny, romantic or full of poetry? ‘All of the above.’ They also show a future literary giant with some decidedly down-to-earth backup plans.
‘He was a young man of 24, finding his way in the world,’ Hicklin says. ‘He writes about wanting to become a mink farmer and boarding house owner. He wanted to find any job he could that would allow him to write.’
The letters eventually stopped. Cue the one from his mother, telling Hicklin that Ted had married and the newlyweds were off to America.
But Ted is only one chapter. The play follows Hicklin well beyond that first romance, to wedding bells, a busy household and a whole new life on the other side of the world
The memory she returns to most has nothing to do with poets or famous marriages. It’s a walk across the Yorkshire moors ‘feeling like Cathy’, the windswept heroine of Wuthering Heights.
Ask Hicklin why she’s telling this story now, at 95, and she’ll simply answer why not? ‘This is a perfect time for me to finally get the chance to do what I probably should have been doing for a long time,’ Hicklin says.
‘I think people don’t realise how great it is to age. I mean, the body makes things really hard, but I have never felt so much like I’m doing what I was born to do.’
Making a theatre debut at 95 is no small feat, and Hicklin hopes audiences leave with more than a few laughs and some literary gossip. ‘There is always a life to live. We are told that we stop being important at a certain age, but we shouldn’t be restricted about the ideas of what we can be.’
And does theatre have an age limit? ‘I hope not,’ she laughs, ‘because I might be in trouble.’
