At 95 years old, Liz Hicklin is set to debut her first play, "Sylvia Plath Stole My Boyfriend," at the Melbourne fringe festival this October. The work draws on her personal experiences as a young woman romantically involved with the late British poet Ted Hughes, who later married the American poet Sylvia Plath.
Hicklin’s journey to the stage began unexpectedly after missing a ferry to the Queenscliffe literary festival due to heavy rain. Opting to take the next ferry, she ultimately made it to the event, where she reconnected with ABC radio presenter Jacinta Parsons. Parsons, who had previously hosted a panel on ageing that Hicklin attended, subsequently became her manager and co-director of the play, helping to shape the production from Hicklin’s extensive personal writings.
In conversations at Hicklin’s apartment in a residential care home on the Mornington Peninsula, the two women shared a dynamic partnership that balanced Hicklin’s lived experience with Parsons’s academic background. Hicklin expressed concern over the focus of the play, wondering whether the audience’s attention would be drawn more to herself or to Sylvia Plath, a figure she never met but remained a notable presence in her story.
Hicklin met Hughes while studying nursing in Cambridge during the early 1950s. Their relationship was marked by shared poetry readings in local pubs and a flurry of passionate letters exchanged when apart. She recalls that time as a period of personal growth, influenced in part by the literary atmosphere of Yorkshire, where Hughes was from. Despite the romance, Hicklin traveled extensively—to Canada and Australia—seeking new experiences and, by her own admission, trying to "recreate Ted Hugheses" elsewhere, though she found none to match him.
Their correspondence continued as Hughes pursued various means to support his writing, including ideas ranging from running a boarding house to mink farming. However, the letters eventually ceased communication. Hicklin’s efforts to reconnect culminated when she received a reply from Hughes’s mother, informing her that Hughes had married Sylvia Plath.
The news devastated Hicklin, who recalls retreating to her bed in tears. She did have one final meeting with Hughes several years later after Plath’s suicide, when he visited with his new partner, Assia Wevill. The encounter, described as their last, left a lasting impression as Hicklin faced the reality of changed circumstances while pregnant.
Although their relationship was brief, Hicklin has maintained Hughes’s letters, postcards, and two unpublished poems, eventually selling these documents to the British Library. She refers to herself wryly as having “milked” her connection to Hughes but contrasts her approach to those who build entire careers on limited experience.
The play itself is a 50-minute production featuring a gameshow motif and a voiceover from Pete Smith, a former host of the Australian quiz show “Sale of the Century,” serving as Hicklin’s inner critic. Plath is portrayed by co-director Sarah Sutherland as a symbolic figure within the narrative.
Beyond her relationship with Hughes, Hicklin’s life story incorporated in the play includes her experiences raising a family in Melbourne and navigating the social circles of the advertising world through marriage, complete with candid reflections on her own affair during that period.
"Sylvia Plath Stole My Boyfriend" offers audiences a nuanced and personal exploration of love, loss, and longevity, reflecting Hicklin’s determination to tell her own story well into her tenth decade.