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Stars explained: * A production of no real merit
with failings in all areas. ** A production showing evidence of not
enough time or effort, or even talent, and which never breathes any real
life into the piece – or a show lumbered with a terrible script. *** A
good enjoyable show which might have some small flaws but has largely
achieved what it set out to do.**** An excellent show which shows a
great deal of work and stage craft with no noticeable or major
flaws.***** A four star show which has found that extra bit of magic
which lifts theatre to another plane. |
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Spoonface Steinberg
Stage2 Youth Theatre
Crescent Theatre
***** WHAT happens
within the mind of anyone with autism is a mystery. The condition has
been explored in a host of films such as
Rain Man
or plays such as The
Curious Incident of the dog in the night time
and, examining the effects on a family, the US play
Falling. But that is looking at autism from our own point
of view, and we don’t understand it; what happens in an autistic mind
happens in a different world to our own. There is a logic, an
understanding, an order but the aria it sings is one we canno And opera plays a major part in Lee Hall’s play
which was originally a radio monologue, the thoughts of one, dying
little girl. It was subsequently adapted as a one woman play for the
stage, but this is Stage2 where the word monologue somehow never made it
into the lexicon, thus we have 18 Spoonfaces and a host of other
characters, mum, dad, cleaner, doctors, nurses and passers-by. Yet the monologue element is still there. The
words are still those from Spoonface’s original monologue but sliced up
and layered on to the 18 faces of Spoonface and the other cast members, yet still
with a rhythmic, continuous flow as if spoken by one person
It was all the more remarkable in that more than
half the cast of 31 are still at primary school - but forget any notion
of school plays. There are times, such as these, when the only discernible difference
between amateur and professional theatre is simply whether anyone gets
paid. Spoonface, so named because her round face looked
like a reflection in a spoon, is a seven-year-old autistic girl whose
father has gone off with another, younger woman, whose mum has taken comfort in a
bottle, and who, to top it all, is diagnosed with terminal cancer – some
people really are dealt a real bum hand. It should be the sort of play where Kleenex are
handed out with the programmes but, although it is laced with rich and
deep emotion, there is also humour and humanity. Spoonface, we never did
find out her real name, contemplates
death in a journey which takes in concentration camps, where her
doctor’s grandmother was a survivor, and the beauty and exquisite
tragedy of opera. There is nothing morbid, nothing maudlin about
Spoonface’s easy relationship with death. It is easy to say she is
autistic so doesn’t understand but perhaps, much more than the rest of
us, she understands it all too well, indeed, there is an elegant logic to
her understanding. In life there is no beginning or end, we are just middle. The late John Slim reviewed Spoonface the last
time it was performed by Stage2 seven years ago when he described it as
“quite, quite remarkable”. Apart from the date, and the fact we are all
that bit older, nothing seems to have changed. It is still quite, quite,
remarkable. Moving and marvellous theatre. We open with our 18
Spoonfaces, all clad in heavenly white, clutching white pillows on
clouds of white duvets to the strains of Bellini’s
Casta Diva
from Norma,
one of the most famous arias in opera. This is
a constant musical theme with Spoonface’s view that opera in the olden
days gave everyone a little piece of beauty, which was important - even
the dying was beautiful - not like today with
Take That! And let’s be honest, when it comes to dying opera
has cornered the market from the ever popular TB in a Paris garret to
leaping off battlements, being dragged into Hades, poisoned, stabbed and
even hara-kiri. But to Spoonface opera is sad, happy, beauty, an
answer to everything, a philosophy for life, we are told, from the opening lines from
Spoonface 2 Joel
Fleming to her inevitable end, which like Spoonface’s personal opera, is sad but
still happy and beautiful. A pair of leads from
Stage2’s Hamlet,
Dan Nash who played Laertes, and Laura Dowsett an admirable Ophelia,
provide an excellent mum and dad – as well as assistant directors to Liz
Light and Mark James. Dowsett’s emotional breakdown when she discovers
Spoonface has terminal cancer is quite magnificent acting. In the close
confines of the studio there is no hiding and she was a mere three feet
away hugging her doomed daughter and sobbing. She seemed so overwhelmed
by waves of crushing despair it was a struggle not to reach out to
comfort her – she was that good.
Adriana Ruttledge as the jolly cleaner, Mrs Spud,
brought a down to earth logic to proceedings, telling Spoonface “to be
different is to be who you are” – and you can’t argue with that. Then there was the
doctor, Dr Bernstein, played by Roni Mevorach, another from
Hamlet and a
memorable Ariel from The Tempest.
With death so close to Spoonface she tells her about her grandmother, an
opera singer, who sang to the Jewish children in the concentration
camps. The beauty of opera again, and, children dying on an industrial
scale from the social cancer of Nazism. In Spoonface’s mind it puts her own impending
demise in perspective. That, she decides, was worse. The set, in celestial white, is simple - duvets
and pillows and simple white table and chairs which serve as everything
from bedrooms and houses to cleverly created MRI scanners and
radiotherapy suites, aided by some clever lighting from Will Monks while
a video wall at the rear gives added context. This was a small cast by Stage2 standards, a mere
31, a result of the calling of GCSE’s and A levels, but as always everyone had a part
to play, and played it to the full, naturally, convincingly and with a
joyous enthusiasm - no fixed smile stage school have a nice play here.
Every word is heard, everything measured and planned, nothing is lost or
wasted, you cared about the characters, and, as always, Stage2 are a
delight to watch The old adage is that amateurs rehearse until
they get it right, professionals rehearse until they cannot get it
wrong, and in all the years I have been reviewing this talented company,
it appears wrong, like monologue, never made it to their lexicon. To 16-07-16 Roger Clarke 13-07-16 |
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t
hear.