FANNY AND FAGGOT/STACY. To 27 October.
London.
FANNY AND FAGGOT and STACY
by Jack Thorne.
Trafalgar Studios (Studio 2) To 27 October 2007.
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat Wed & Sat 3pm.
Runs 2hr 30mnin One interval.
TICKETS: 0870 060 6632.
www.theambassadors.com/trafalgarstudios (booking fee).
Review: Timothy Ramsden 8 October.
Valuable drawing together of two plays by noteworthy young dramatist.
In 1968, 11-year old Mary Bell became the Jamie Bulger killer of her day, killing boys of 4 and 3. With her at one killing was the older Norma Bell (a friend but no relation). Norma was found not guilty; Mary was convicted of manslaughter and spent her teens in secure accommodation.
Jack Thorne’s play, seen earlier this year at the Finborough Theatre and in Edinburgh, presents the girls as Fanny and Faggot, aliases scrawled in graffiti round their native Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The graffiti on the wall of Georgia Lowe’s set are both childishly rude and defiant, and naïve showing-off.
The production’s lost its interval, and the resulting scene change is well-used to separate the two ages of Mary, Norma taking away the child’s clothes, Lucy, her friend 10-years on, bringing on the 21-year old’s outfit.
It also makes Stephen Keyworth’s production seem pacier, focusing strongly the contrast between Mary’s child and young adult selves. At 11, life is a game for Mary, just as the girls’ recall of stern-voiced figures from their trial dissolves into fits of giggles. Elicia Daly’s Mary is an insistent, insinuating presence, teasing, tormenting, wheedling to get her way, or withdrawing into herself as Sophie Fletcher’s older, taller Norma follows, dependent and subordinate.
In the second part Mary and fellow detainee Lucy abscond for a weekend in Blackpool, picking-up a couple of soldiers back from Northern Ireland. If we’d not known otherwise, we might well take Diana May’s Lucy for the older Mary. She’s streetwise, confident and provocative, though in a more ordered way than young Mary.
Mary’s now the quiet one, sitting on her bed by, rather than with, Ray as Lucy and soldier Steve get busy beneath the sheets. What Mary wants now is to be normal. That, with her final words “Try again. Yes,” sums up a contrast Daly eloquently expresses.
Stacy (first seen at the Arcola) is more comic, but there’s a sinister tinge to its character. Ralf Little performs him expertly, his fast-action speech skidding along on the character’s nerves, his disordered mind expressed also in the quick-alternating, sometimes gruesome projected imagery.
Fanny and Faggot.
Two/Mary Bell: Elicia Daly.
One/Norma Bell: Sophie Fletcher.
Lucy: Diana May.
Steve: Christopher Daley.
Ray: Simon Darwen.
Director: Stephen Keyworth.
Designer: Georgia Lowe.
Lighting: David Plater.
Sound: Dominic Thurgood/Nick Price.
Movement: John Hoggarth.
Stacy
Rob: Ralf Little.
Director: Hamish Pirie.
Designer: Beck Rainford.
Lighting: David Plater.
Sound: Nick Price.
Composition: Max and Ben Ringworth.
Movement: Ayse Tashkiran.
Digital manipulation: Dav Bernard.
2007-10-09 09:22:56