Spoonface Steinberg

The stage was set, Audlem's World Famous Scout & Guide Hall became a Theatre Cafe and a select audience took their seats in the intimate setting for the evening's performance – Spoonface Steinberg.

It was a return to Audlem of this much praised play written by Lee Hall. For this performance, the setting moved from the hospital bed to a hospital ward family room, a playground for the imagination of 8-year old Spoonface, an autistic child dying with cancer and of Jewish decent.

Far from being a mawkish, moralising tale, tackling the dissolving marriage relationship of her parents, cancer, and the Holocaust, the matter of fact delivery of the autistic Spoonface brings an enlightenment and humour through her simple observations.

The fact that Lee Hall's writing portrayed autism with all it's positives was masterfully achieved without any demeaning or sentimentality through actor Rebecca Fenwick's captivating performance, directed by Alan Rothwell.

This was simply entertaining, a performance engaging the audience on every emmotional level as actor Rebecca Fenwick lived as Spoonface, reacting as an autistic child would, when the audience laughed, she replayed the line, the more the audience reacted, the more she played.

The Rubiks cube, the walk, the solitaire the monologue so suberbly executed by Fenwick was acting at its best, and I mean its best. For me the 'Sparks' will be the scene that will be forever my 'Spoonface Steinberg'.

The Q & A that followed the performance provided an engaging postscript for the audience, an opportunity for Fenwick and Rothwell to further engage with 'Spoonface' and provide both feedback and shared experiences in a light hearted though informative session.

Spoonface Steinberg is a play by British playwright Lee Hall which was first broadcast as a dramatic monologue on BBC Radio 4 on Monday 27th January 1997. Such was the popular acclaim that the BBC repeated it on Radio 4 the following Saturday afternoon. It is the fourth and final play in the God's Country series of linked radio dramas broadcast in 1997 on BBC Radio 4.

Due to Spoonface Steinberg's success it went on to sell thousands of copies on cassette and has come to overshadow the other plays in the series, It is often thought of as a standalone piece yet the series were intrinsically linked, and later, Lee Hall's 'Billy Elliot' came from Mrs Spud, the housekeeper Spoonface shares her observations with.

In the preview to the play, it is not an easy piece of theatre to sell, and for most the subject "A seventy minute monologue, features a young autistic eight(ish)-year-old girl with cancer" however, though the basis for the play, the reality is so much more, the brilliance that is the writer, Lee Hall, the direction of Alan Rothwell and actor Rebecca Fenwick made this compelling theatre.

Thank you for supporting another Hoc19 event. We look forward to bringing you Rebecca Fenwick's next appearance as a Pirate in 'The Golden Age', a factual piece of Theatre later in the year.

If you would like to be kept up to date with future events email: hoc19@me.com

Ian Haughey

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