Darwin’s Cleaner

The Alexander Centre: Jubilee Room, Faversham, ME13 8NZ
Sunday 5th October 2025 5:30PM

Imagine a woman born in 1809, a servant, who would not have been documented at all except for the extraordinary circumstances into which she was born. The cook has a daughter – Hen, but on the same day in the same house is born a boy: the extraordinary Charles Darwin! Their lives become entwined.

We meet Hen, played by Olivia Post, “both enormously affecting and a shapeshifting narrator”, when she has had enough of the mess and the carcasses, the flesh-eating plants and the pinned butterflies. Watch Hen dishing the dirt on the Darwins and finding her own way as the world for Victorian women begins to change.

Written by Saskia Wesnigk-Wood, this one-woman show has been described by FringeReview as "quietly groundbreaking work, with real potential".

www.saskiawesnigk.net

You may also like the following events from Faversham Fringe:

• Next month, 19th September, 04:00 pm, Iain Banks, Kentish Man in Faversham
• This October, 3rd October, 07:00 pm, The Improvised Surprise Party! in Faversham
• This October, 3rd October, 07:00 pm, Emmy & Joy Don't Like Boys in Faversham