The Mad Woman of Lyme

A remarkable new play imagines the mental turmoil that faced pioneering Dorset fossil-hunter Mary Anning during her final days

- Jeremy Miles

Set in 1846, Mary Anning: The Mad Woman of Lyme is the latest production by Dorset’s own As One Theatre Company. It finds Mary Anning close to death reflecting on an extraordinary life that started in childhood gathering fossils from the local beach to supplement her family’s meagre income. By the end of her life Mary is an expert paleontologist - the ultimate dinosaur hunter. But at what cost?

Due to her gender and class there has been precious little money and no public acknowledgement of her work. Now aged 47, and in the final agonies of breast cancer, Mary tries to make sense of it all.

Her greatest finds have been bought by male fossil collectors and presented under their own names. Is she being punished by God? Her studies have proved that the world must be many millions of years old and not just the couple of thousand suggested by the Bible. For a devout Christian this has been a terrifying discovery.

Coping with the devastating effects of laudanum - the tincture of opium used by the Victorians for pain relief - Mary is haunted by hallucinations of friends, enemies and even the creatures she has spent her life hacking out of the rocks near her home.