International Anthony Burgess Foundation
The Greater Manchester Fringe continues throughout September. I still have a couple of shows left to review on this year’s programme. I’ll be reviewing shows on this blog, and also for North Manchester FM. The next show I saw was The Formidable Lizzie Boone, by Selina Helliwell, which I saw at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation on Friday 24th September. The radio version of this review will be broadcast on my Hannah’s Bookshelf Greater Manchester Fringe Reviews Special on Tuesday 28th September, but here’s the blog version…
The Formidable Lizzie Boone is a one-woman (almost) show, written and performed by Selina Helliwell and directed by Hannah Heaton. It follows a format quite familiar to the Fringe, in which a slightly awkward, slightly confrontational, but always rather likeable young woman speaks directly to the audience about the things in her life that have made her… well… slightly awkward and confrontational. In this case, our titular protagonist is ostensibly speaking to her therapist, so her explanations have a clinical as well as confessional context.
Lizzie (played by Helliwell) is, in many ways, just an ordinary girl. And, given some of the details of her story, that’s actually quite a tragic thing to say. Picked on at primary school and bullied at secondary school, Lizzie enters early adulthood with no self-esteem and few real friends – it’s a story I imagine many people in the audience will sadly relate to. Although she worries that she’s a ‘psychopath’ (a bombshell dropped early in the performance), the catalogue of behaviours, relationships and mistakes we see unfold on stage are depressingly normal. For all Lizzie’s conviction that there is something horribly different and shocking about her personality, Helliwell’s character emerges as a kinds of millennial everywoman, and the reaction of the audience to some of her revelations certainly seemed to confirm this.
Helliwell presents Lizzie’s story mostly through monologue, with a bare set containing just a single chair. The pressure is on, then, to engage the audience directly for an entire hour, but fortunately Helliwell is well up to the challenge. Although we see her talking to her therapist Marie (played by Carla Kayani-Lawman – more on that shortly), Lizzie repeatedly breaks off from what she is saying to talk directly to the audience, explaining her feelings towards Marie, how she is not necessarily answering her questions fully, and explaining the background to the issues for which she is seeking therapy.
Helliwell is at ease with the audience – even when her verbal performance moves to the physical in a burlesque dance sequence midway through the play – and her conversational style is one of the reasons why Lizzie Boone is such a likable character for all her flaws. Though her interactions with Marie are hesitant and sometimes forced, her address to the audience is natural and unguarded. Helliwell does a good job of creating this balance, allowing the audience to warm to her character to pave the way for a jubilant and celebratory ending.
While I’ve said that Marie is played by Kayani-Lawman, it should be noted that this is an off-stage performance. Helliwell is the only performer that we see on stage. Other characters are performed through recorded voiceovers, to which Helliwell responds, often adding additional descriptive details that allow us to picture the individuals and better understand their relationship to the protagonist-narrator (whether all of the descriptions are flattering or neutral… well… no one said this wasn’t a highly subjective piece!). Through these voiceovers, we learn of Lizzie’s relationship to the various men in her life and her past, including Robin (voiced by Christopher Sutcliffe), a recent boyfriend with whom Lizzie has had a disagreement, Rick (voiced by Adrian Stretton), an unpleasant ex, Paul (voiced by Rodney Gooden), a platonic friend who responded badly to learning about the details of Lizzie’s sex life, and Mr Paxam (also voiced by Gooden), a P.E. teacher at Lizzie’s sixth form college.
It is this last character who provides some of the more unpleasant content in the show (though Rick comes a close second in many ways). As the content warnings for the show indicate, one of the issues Lizzie has been struggling with is the emotional aftermath of a sexual assault when she was at college. Helliwell takes the bold decision to enact some parts of this on stage, coupled with a voiceover of the aggressor. Bold as it may be, it’s a very astute decision, as it subtly embodies the reality of living with the aftereffects of a traumatic experience. What the audience sees is Lizzie enacting the abuse on herself (it is, after all, Helliwell’s own hands that are performing as Mr Paxam’s), while the voice of her assailant echoes around her. It was uncomfortable to watch, but very cleverly staged.
On a lighter – and much more hopeful note – there is another voiceover that plays a different role in Lizzie’s story. Mary Taylor voices Debz (with a ‘z’ not an ‘s’), Lizzie’s closest – only – friend. On her first audio appearance, Debz appears to be the polar opposite of Lizzie. She’s married with a child, plus brasher and more self-confident. The pair seem to have little in common, and we later learn that they met quite by chance when their respective workplaces held their Christmas parties at the same venue.
At times, it’s easy to get infuriated with Debz, who seems to be ignoring her friend’s anxieties and problems in favour of her own lascivious fantasies of adultery. However, there is more to Debz – and more to her friendship with Lizzie – than we first realize. I really enjoyed the way Lizzie and Debz’s friendship was evoked through suggestion and implication, which was often at odds with the way Lizzie bluntly described it. There is an unexpected warmth to this portrayal of a mismatched, but ultimately very strong, female friendship, and despite the fact that Debz initially appears to be introduced for comic relief, I found myself wanting to see more of this pair of friends. I would happily watch a Lizzie-and-Debz sequel to The Formidable Lizzie Boone!
(As an aside, Helliwell’s other production at this year’s Greater Manchester Fringe, Fruit Salad tells the story of a mismatched pair of friends, Cherry and Peaches (played by Taylor and Helliwell), who meet by chance but develop an ‘unlikely but beautiful friendship’. Clearly, this is a theme that Helliwell is drawn to in her writing, and it’s an interesting and thought-provoking one.)
To return to The Formidable Lizzie Boone, what Helliwell ultimately offers audiences here is a well-drawn character sketch of a troubled, but far from hopeless, young woman on the verge of discovering who she really is. I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that Lizzie Boone isn’t a psychopath, but she is a character who is struggling to understand her own personality and identity. The audience comes to know Lizzie as she comes to know herself, allowing us to share her sense of hope and celebration at the ending.
Once again, the Fringe has offered a well-written and well-performed solo show – continuing my soft spot for this type of performance! Helliwell’s writing reveals a knack for capturing something about the mundane and ordinary business of human interactions (even interactions of an unpleasant nature) and elevating it to a poetic, imaginative and compelling stage performance. This is another writer who I think is one to watch in the future.
The Formidable Lizzie Boone was on at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation on 24th and 25th September, as part of the Greater Manchester Fringe. For more information about this year’s festival programme, please visit the Greater Manchester Fringe website.
