Autobiographer by Melanie Wilson at Toynbee Studios

Autobiographer by Melanie Wilson at Toynbee Studios

20 April, 2012
by: Ricky PS

Gentle, ethereal performers present a story with no narrative and only the audience to fill in the blanks. 

Four women, whose ages span adulthood, stand in middle of a cramped studio, surrounded by the audience. They’re apparently one person, wearing identical dresses and speaking in the same confused poetry of fractured images and feelings. Every phrase of Melanie Wilson’s script is sufficiently simple to evoke whatever you want, and we’ve no idea who this four-part person is, what’s happened to her, or where she’s going. Don’t be discouraged when I say we don’t find out.

The oldest of the four asks audience members a lot of questions. But her gentle, witty queries sometimes turn into demands, all the more urgent because she once knew the answers. Janet Henfrey poses these questions lightly but with such conviction that people weren’t replying to an actor, they were talking to a confused old lady. They were embarrassed and patronising, or sympathetic and caring.

The other actors start asking us questions too. But how has Alice Lamb’s unnervingly intelligent teen forgotten so much? And why has Penelope McGhie’s elegant middle-aged mother so painfully lost her mind? This isn’t a detective story and there isn’t an answer. Or, rather, those aren’t the questions.

In the middle stands Melanie Wilson’s tough but ethereal thirty-something, with memories as patchy as the others’ and an acting style that’s sometimes less naturalistic. As writer, director and sound designer it makes sense that Wilson is also principle performer, but I couldn’t find a reason in the play for these imbalances. However, it’s enough that she is superb.

The production is too. Peter Arnold and Ben Pacey’s design of a pretty night sky buzzes and twinkles with old-style light bulbs. Beneath, Wilson’s storm of gorgeous, threatening noises buffets actions so careful they almost dance. Tiny gestures ache with desire, memory or forgetting, and Pacey’s stage lighting generally emphasizes these with subtlety. But sometimes, instead, his design confronts us. Most devastating was a tableau of evening sunlight pouring through a door’s window onto sad, tired bodies.

Echoing voices, weather sounds, light bulbs in the dark and audience participation are very familiar for a black box studio. Perhaps that’s not a problem. Thoughtful work like this doesn’t fit with macho novelty. Instead, Wilson uses an unobtrusive vocabulary to say something quietly surprising. It is the beauty of telling stories, even when there is no narrative. And it is the importance of people connecting, especially if we don’t know who we are.



Autobiographer runs at Toynbee Studios until 5th May. Click here to read Science, Theatre and Dementia: An interview with Melanie Wilson.

 
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Ricky PS