April De Angelis comedy, to be premiered in Hampstead, explores life of actor at a time when married women were ‘legally dead’

She was known as the Queen of Drury Lane and the first truly respected female actor in theatre, achieving an astonishing level of celebrity at the end of the 18th century.

But despite her notoriety there are no contemporary biographies about Sarah Siddons, who was labelled by her contemporaries as “tragedy personified”.