FIFTY3FRIDAYS: A TRIUMPH OF FRAGILE CREATURES

Ever been to a gig where you can come away with a reading list? Wednesday night with Hannah Rose Platt at The Other Palace, London was as erudite as it was entertaining. The evening saw the return of the singer-songwriter and storyteller extraordinaire to the intimate space of the niche theatre’s studio, having made such an impression here with her full band in February 2024. Tonight was more of a stripped-back affair as Hannah, accompanied by husband and bassist Freddie Draper, reprised her Fragile Creatures show which the pair had performed so successfully for 15 nights at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival last August.

All photos of Hannah Rose Platt at The Other Palace by Kevin England

The Edinburgh shows were all staged at Surgeons’ Hall, an appropriate space given that the songs on Hannah’s latest album, Fragile Creatures, centre around historical, often hidden, stories of women’s health. Tonight, in front of a committed gathering, they equally came alive in both their sadness and sense of celebration. With a couple of exceptions, I guess, for reasons of live dynamics, the eleven songs were played in long player order, beginning with the rhythmic “Ataraxia”. Introducing the song, Hannah referenced Unwell Women by Elinor Cleghorn, one of several reading list titles she gave out. The calm serenity behind the song title belies the chemical compliance dispensed to suburban housewives in 1950s USA; a serious start to an enlightening evening.

Backing tracks were employed sparingly where needed as in the opening song but essentially the show was a double act: Hannah on electric guitar and vocals, Freddie on bass. For “Curious Mixtures” which followed, Hannah set up loop percussive and guitar figures to echo the version on record while Freddie tastefully employed bass harmonics on top of his continually measured accompaniment. Far removed from Fifties America, this song sheds light on an early midwife going about her work at night at a time when healing could easily be misunderstood as heresy.  Hannah employed the softer side of her versatile voice to capture the mystery at the song’s core.

The impressive range of the album both musically and lyrically was underlined by the next three songs. “Magdalene” draws on the shameful plight of young women confined in Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries, a subject spotlighted by films such as Philomena and Small Things Like These. The song has a tender eloquence to it, mirrored by Hannah’s filigree vocal. “The Yellow Wallpaper”, inspired by Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story on the infamous ‘rest-cure’ for postpartum depression musically had the feel of Hannah’s 2023 album, Deathbed Confessions, her vocal incantations leading to an abrupt ending. Conversely, “La Grande Hysterie” was closer to punk rock with fast guitar and bass driving it forward, while lyrically calling out 19^th-century medical exploitation of so-called hysterical women.

The sheer eclecticism of the music to accompany Hannah Rose Platt’s artful storytelling continued to shine as the evening progressed. “Rest In Persistence (An Anthem For Anne Greene)” is simply the amazing tale a 17th-century English servant hanged for miscarrying and miraculously revived. “The Sick Rose” takes its cue from Blake’s symbolic poem. As Hannah railed against the gender health gap and women having to fight to be believed, space was given to Freddie’s sympathetic bass solo. “Radiant”, the twin-edged title of the tale of the Radium Girls, the lick-dip-and paint women who worked in ‘glow-in-the-dark’ clock factories in the 1920s, unaware of the dangers to health, had a triumphant post-rock feel that mirrors how these ladies fought back and won.

The terrific “Young Men Need Their Wives” was held back till now and played solo by Hannah. Stripped down to voice and electric guitar, it was played with plenty of attack and voiced with the spirit and fight that comes with it being based on her personal experience of a past abusive relationship.

The home run continued with “The Edinburgh Seven”, harrowing in part and presented with strident blues rock guitar in celebration of brave 19^th-century women, degraded and attacked, yet who fought for the right to practise medicine. The lines “We memorise maps of the body / Like lovers in the dark” encapsulated the struggle for women who “only want to heal / Do no harm / One patient at a time.”

A wonderfully named “The Wandering Womb Ballet” completed our education about these Fragile Creatures with Freddie taking over guitar to accompany Hannah’s vocal. She cited Fascinating Aida as an inspiration for the song style and that seemed very apt for its theatrical tones. After a short interval, the duo returned with a short closing set featuring songs from Deathbed Confessions – “The Mermaid and the Sailor”, “Dead Man on the G Train” and “The Kissing Room”, a Tom Waits cover, “Tango Till They’re Sore” and finally Hannah’s signature torch song, “1954.” 

“G Train” worked particularly well with just guitar and bass underlining that using just two instruments was no barrier to diversity in presentation while “The Kissing Room” had Freddie playing the piano part on bass guitar, peppering it with copious harmonics. Hannah reached back over 10 years to close the show solo with “1954”, a song inspired by a story of working in a care home in which the central character imagines her late husband arriving to pick her up for a date. Its sensibilities seemed entirely apt for an evening which both expressed and celebrated the struggles of womanhood over the centuries. Here is “1954” as originally presented in 2015.