7th - 10th Jan 2009

The Crescent Studio

This play was fast moving and highly visual performed with the audience on three sides in the studio. There is inevitably an underlying sadness but also a sense of elation and an overriding optimism. For Spoonface, autism is a condition that causes her to see the world through a glass, distantly - everything is an inexplicable jumble. This also becomes a saving grace as she does not expect life to make sense. She observes her own decline with vivid flashes of detachment and serenity.

"Youngsters Give a Superb Take on Harrowing Tale; Spoonface Steinberg Stage 2 Crescent Theatre, Birmingham"

JOHN SLIM
 

LEE Hall's monologue spoken by Spoonface, an autistic girl character who is stricken by cancer, has been transformed, in typical Stage2 fashion and with consummate flair, into a story told by 24 youngsters with an age range of seven to 18.

Liz Light's studio production is enacted with vigour on a collection of white quilts laid edge to edge. The entire company is also in white, achieving a oneness and a sense of purpose that hits you between the eyes.

The first lines fall to Laura Dowsett, who is seven. Her confident, no-nonsense delivery sets an immediate standard below which no-one falls in an evening which is essentially asking the meaning of life while Spoonface learns that she is going to die.

She discusses death in the wartime concentration camps, wonders whether God has cancer and explains that because she's backward she was never very good at saying what was wrong with her.

Brilliant is a word to be approached with caution. Let us, therefore, be content with saying that this is quite superb. The company has been choreographed into a vibrant whole, mostly on the move but at times freezing exquisitely into stillness while an operatic aria resounds. And it's all been achieved in ten rehearsals. Quite, quite remarkable.

VERDICT: *****
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