Bella Merlin Discusses Tilly No-Body as it Opens at the Arcola Theatre
Posted on
In 1906 a 19-year-old actress called **Tilly Newes** was given the role of Lulu in a Vienna production of **Frank Wedekind**’s *Pandora’s Box*, the second part of a two-part play which had attracted considerable scandal. There had been attempts to ban the play, and **Wedekind** and his publisher were prosecuted for what was deemed its immoral content.
**Wedekind** had already known public scandal. He had been forced to flee Germany after the publication of *Spring Awakening* in 1891, a furious, groundbreaking play about the appalling consequences of sexual ignorance on a group of teenagers.
**Wedekind**’s stories of Lulu—the femme fatale who brings sexual ecstasy but also death to her lovers and who meets her own end at the hands of Jack the Ripper—caused further opprobrium. In the Vienna production he himself played Jack the Ripper. He was in his early 40s. Shortly after he and **Tilly** wed.
It was not a happy marriage. Both **Tilly** and her husband were prone to depression and came from families in which suicide was common. **Wedekind** was enormously possessive of **Tilly** but also provocative. Guests to the **Wedekind** household were often seated opposite a nude portrait of **Tilly**. But male compliments aroused anger. **Wedekind** thwarted his wife’s career. When she married him, **Tilly Newes** was on the path to becoming somebody. **Wedekind** turned her into a nobody.
**Bella Merlin**’s [*Tilly No-Body,*](https://www.londontheatredirect.com/play/tilly-no-body-tickets) which opens at the [Arcola Theatre](https://www.londontheatredirect.com/venue/arcola-theatre-london) this week, after an Edinburgh run last summer, reclaims **Tilly’**s story and brings her out from under the shadow of **Wedekind.** It gives **Tilly** the chance to return to the stage in her own right, not merely as the wife and muse of the famous writer who influenced those who came after, including **Brecht**.
'It is essentially a dream play,’ explains **Merlin,** who has been working on the piece for over 15 years. “It takes place over the three days when she had booked herself into a hotel and taken poison and was unconscious.” Designer **Kerry Jones** has created a deserted circus environment, one which echoes **Wedekind’**s interest in the circus, a form for which he had undying enthusiasm.
Tilly survived taking mercury, although she suffered severe internal burns, but she lived into her 80s, long surviving her husband, who died shortly after her suicide attempt. Despite continued mental illness, **Tilly** went onto write an autobiography. **Merlin** translated that autobiography, which she says was the place where **Tilly** was making sense of her life.
But *Tilly No-Body* goes beyond the biopic and a portrait of a woman of whom few people will have heard.
“During the show it is as if she is unpacking and asking the question, 'How did I get to this point?' and that’s something we all do in our lives when we think back and reflect on choices we have made," says **Merlin**. She explains that it took a year for the mercury poisoning to make its way out of **Tilly**’s body via her skin.
“By the end of that time she had a new skin.” The show reflects that sense of being reborn.
**Merlin** has performed the play in the US and Europe, and a filmed version was shown at a meeting of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women in 2024. The occasion forced Merlin to confront her own relationship to **Tilly**’s story.
'The moderator of the event asked me, "What's your connection to the material? I said, ‘I don’t think we need to go into that,’ but the moderator said, ‘I think we do.' **Merlin** says that it made her realise that playing Tilly and telling her story “has taught me a lot about reclaiming my own personal narrative".
While in her twenties as a jobbing actress in London, singing **Piaf, Brel** and **Dietrich** in wine bars to get by, Merlin met a playwright who told her, "You remind me of **Wedekind**’s Lulu.” The pair embarked on a relationship, but Merlin says that the relationship turned toxic. She says that telling **Tilly**’s story has enabled her to reflect on her role in that and that 'it's all right for me to claim the murkier side of my own life experience.”
Audiences as far apart as Germany and South Korea have certainly connected with **Tilly’**s story, which until now has often been seen as little more than a footnote in a story of the dramatist she married.
“In her late 70s and still suffering a mental health crisis, doctors encouraged her to write her life down. She did, and she described it as if a weight were lifting off of her shoulders. The last line of her autobiography is ‘…and I knew I wanted to go back on stage.’” That never happened because six months later she was dead.
But **Merlin**’s show shines a spotlight and brings **Tilly** out from the shadows.“I really do like to think I am giving her the chance she wanted to go back on stage.”
[*Tilly No-Body: Catastrophes of Love*](https://www.londontheatredirect.com/play/tilly-no-body-tickets) plays at the Arcola Theatre until 25 July 2026. Book your tickets today.