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Spoonface Steinberg
* This production awarded a Good's Great
Playwright - Lee Hall The Play was first broadcast on BBC Radio
4 in 1997, it has since been done as a stage play.
Director - Nick Farr
Lighting Designer - Simon Wilkinson
Voice Coach - Alex Gillon
Stage Management - Ellie Bazeley and Helen Clarkson
Company - Manick Company and Queen Margaret University College
Drama Department
Venues & Dates - 3 & 4 May at The Byre Theatre
St Andrews and 15 - 18 May at 8pm at The Pend Studio, Gateway Theare
Elm Row Edinburgh 0131
317 3939
Reviewer - Thelma Good
I heard this vivid play when it was first broadcast. It made a deep impression
on me, taking the listener into the world of a girl with autism whose
face looks like one reflected in a spoon. This production of Lee Hall's
Spoonface Steinberg is even more arresting and is now briefly on stage
in Scotland, with an actress, Janine Mellor who is stunning even
though she's just at the brink of her professional life and is just finishing
her fourth and final year at Queen Margaret University College Drama Department.
Acted on a slightly raised stage laid out like a child's platform bed
with spotty and dog shaped cushions, lit with considerably subtlety by
Simon Wilkinson, Mellor's is a performance of amazing insight and
intensity. She, just simply is Spoonface Steinberg, the autistic daughter
of parents who are philosophers. Their daughter's physical and the psychological
uniqueness is brought out by Mellor so it's a real person you encounter,
not a person trying to seem someone else. The young girl's view of the
world and her place in it is sharp and clear, as she talks about if she
"could ever grow up", "called it a side effect but it affected
me all over" and "to be different is to be who we are".
Hall's script is woven of so many fine strands, Mums and Dads, caring,
illness, concentration camps, prayer, all drawn together and embroidered
by one little girl's foreground.
The immaculate direction by Nick Farr of Lee Hall's multi-layered script
has released one of those special experiences where we understand and
grasp more by seeing our world through the eyes, voice and experience
of someone especially different. It's funny, sad and beautiful and shot
through it like lustrous silk, as Hall asks for, with the voice of Spoonface's
"sweet singing opera lady", Maria Callas. This play and this
production fills one's being with the miracle and heartstopping reality
of being human and what it is to live and to die.
Go, listen and see, this is something quite, quite special.
© Thelma Good 16 May 2002
*Good's Great - An award I only give to productions rarely, 7 have been
given out in the 18 months I have been Theatre Editor for EdinburghGuide.
So they're rarer even than other reviewers 5 stars!
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