Sharp contrast in shows
Spoonface Steinberg, Written by Lee Hall, The Ballad of Paragon Station, Written and performed by Hester Ullyart, Lyttelton Arts Factory, until Saturday.
Solo plays are treacherous beasts. One slip and the performer is left exposed in full view of the audience.
Kudos then to Evie Guttridge and Hester Ullyart, two young British actresses presenting two sharply contrasting solo performances at the Lyttelton Arts Factory. They are here as part of an evolving relationship between the LAF and Britain’s East Riding Theatre.
That said, and despite the quality of both Guttridge and Ullyart’s individual performances, both pieces reveal the inherent strengths and weaknesses of the monologue as a theatrical form.
Spoonface Steinberg, written by Lee Hall, focuses on a young autistic girl confronting terminal illness. If that sounds like a recipe for an hour of bleak despair, it is not. This is a gentle, exploration of how a child confronts her own disability and mortality while dealing with the perplexing adult world around her. Guttridge plays the role with a fey charm, gentle humour and great sincerity. Her character’s love of opera even allows the glorious voice of Maria Callas to accompany her journey.
However, the work’s emotional impact is tempered by a maudlin quality which occasionally dispatches wavelets of schmaltzy philosophising straight from Mary Poppins’ own lips. Confronted by these lapses, I found myself wishing that Spoonface, young as she was, would rage against the dying of the light. Lines like ‘‘every moment is forever’’, hardly delivers that.
Happily, the piece was dragged from the jaws of cloying pathos by Guttridge’s luminous and seamless performance.
In sharp contrast, The Ballad of Paragon Station, written and performed by Hester Ullyart, is a bluntly spoken journey through the nocturnal life of a Northern port city long since abandoned by the good times.
Playing a cast of characters, Ullyart’s portrayals contain a raw energy which crackles and fizzes. It might be profane, earthy and noisy, but it is a performance containing a strong vein of poignancy and hard-edged lyricism.