Ellen Brammar’s new musical is inspired by the true story of how Elizabeth Thompson, the Victorian-era British painter, nearly became the Royal Academy of Art’s first female member in the 1870s. Despite the fact that she specialized in masculine subjects—military campaigns! battles!—and even though she impressed the art world with her painting The Roll Call, which was purchased by Queen Victoria, a majority of the men who controlled Britain’s oldest art institution denied her entry. Brammar was particularly drawn to Thompson because she was “determined and gloriously arrogant.” With a cast made of the U.K.’s best drag queens, the show sees Thompson (played by Emer Dineen) fighting for recognition in England’s male-dominated art world. —Jensen Davis