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Steps on life's journey
Rebecca Ryan, centre, as Holly with, behind her, Polly Lister as Fiona, Robert Vernon as Miko, Neal Craig as Denny, Naomi Ackie as Grace, and Jack Finch as 155 Solace of the Road
Derby Theatre*****
DERBY playhouse is fortunate indeed to be staging the world premiere of
Siobhan Dowd’s novel of loss and homecoming. The
book was shortlisted for the Costa Children’s Book Award 2009, the
Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize 2009 and the Bisto Children’s Book of
the Year Award 2010 and has been adapted for the stage by Olivier
Award-winning writer Mike Kenny. London born Dowd died from
breast cancer in 2007 at the age of 47. Solace of the Road was
her final novel, and was published posthumously. Holly, transforming into
Solace by means of her foster mother’s wig, is played by Rebecca Ryan
who will be familiar to many people through her roles in the Channel 4
series Shameless and the BBC drama Waterloo Road. When
Holly’s favourite care worker leaves she is fostered out to a
well-meaning, but cloying, middle class couple. Polly Lister plays her
foster mother and several other characters in a virtuoso performance.
Materially she is well looked after but she hates school and is sure
that “home” should be more than this, and that if she can just get to
Ireland she will find her lost mother and a better life. She takes her foster mother’s
wig to make herself look older and sets off on her adventure, physically
and then spiritually transformed. Rebecca Ryan is an engaging
and convincing Holly, smart and hard enough to manipulate her foster
mother, but naive enough to think she can walk to happiness. When she
wears the wig, she assumes a new name (Solace) and assumes a new
persona, simultaneously empowering her, and placing
herself in danger. As the story unfolds you wait
to see how she might fall by the wayside on her journey. She’s picked up
by a man in a nightclub. She gets a lift from a lonely pig-farmer. The
worst is inevitable, isn’t it? Although she is beset by danger on every
side, Holly also encounters hospitality, kindness, and a heart-warming
conclusion. There are currently more than
70,000 children in care in the UK and this story will appeal to those in
that position, all teenagers who will empathise with Holly’s dilemma,
and adults who will shake their heads at her impetuosity, but admire her
spirit.
Teens who have not lived
through similar experiences will come away with a deeper empathy for
teens who have, and those teens who have lived through abuse or
homelessness may come away with hope, and a deeper understanding of the
consequences of their actions, good and bad. Drink, drugs, shoplifting,
domestic violence and suicide all find a platform, but this is an
uplifting, not grim, tale. Derby Theatre’s artistic
director Sarah Brigham, one of the few women in the role nationally, has
done an excellent job to realise this on a stage imaginatively set by
Barney George, and has worked tirelessly to involve young people locally
in its story by working with Derbyshire schools. Its authenticity is
compelling. Sarah explained: "Solace’ is a
play primarily aimed at a younger audience and has had these people in
mind from the outset. Derby Theatre’s has worked in an exemplary manner
to engage with children in care across Derbyshire through the
development of this piece. Children in care have been into rehearsals
and worked alongside the company to help inform this piece and the
characters we meet." Although on the one hand this
is a story about Holly it is also about people who did something for her
and asked for nothing back. The rest of the cast comprise
Naomi Ackie, Neal Craig, Jack Finch and Robert Vernon who all take on
multi roles with considerable aplomb. "Sweet Dreams Are Made of This" is
performed, sung and reprised on several occasions, its sinister menacing
undertones perfectly suited to the mood of the production. The play inevitably starts
slowly as the scene, and characters, are set, then careers towards an
emotional final scene in the first act, never slackening its emotional
ride for the entire second act. Rebecca Ryan is superb, carrying the
production and inspiring all around her all squeezing a lyrical but
convincing script to the maximum, evoking a well-deserved and rousing
ovation at the play's end. I can see this play being performed for many
years to come. To 14-03-15 Gary Longden
02-03-15
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