Spoonface Steinberg is a play about an autistic seven-year-old girl with terminal cancer. It’s also quite funny.
The piece was originally written for the radio, and this is reflected in its simplicity. One actress scampers alone around her bedroom, chattering away to no-one in particular. It may seem a truism, but the success of the play therefore depends almost entirely on the performance of the actress in question. Luckily, Alice Porter is excellent. At times, I looked at her and saw a child.
Unexpectedly, Porter told me that she found it harder to act convincingly as a child than to convey the effects of autism or cancer. The production/direction tag team of Flo Brady and Luke Rollason have evidently spent a long time helping her ease herself into this alien role. From digging out old home videos of the Rollason brood to spending hours capering round their houses like toddlers, their attention to detail has helped Porter to develop a character which she very seldom breaks.
When I entered the room, she was already in character, clutching a felt-tip pen and scribbling away on the floor. Throughout the preview, the most moving moments were conducted in breathless silence. Without speaking a word, Porter conveyed a sense of mingled innocence and wisdom. Her breathless naivety was amongst the most complex emotions I have seen conveyed by any actor at Oxford.
There are some elements of her performance which are not yet as convincing. In part, these stem from the near-impossibility of realistically portraying an autistic child. Many autistic people, particularly children, struggle to maintain eye contact with others- a clear barrier to maintaining the audience’s focus. More generally, a truly realistic script would probably be impossible to follow. At such a young age, even relatively moderate autism often creates near-impassable and immensely frustrating barriers in communication.
To an extent, the script does seek to circumnavigate this. Spoonface often speaks in phrases and mannerisms gleaned from the adults around her, after the fashion of children everywhere, and this helps the audience to understand her rambling and insular monologue. Much of the gentle humour is derived from the patently inappropriate nature of these lines. Her childish description of adult emotional situations she clearly cannot comprehend is often heartbreaking, but equally Porter draws laughs from the dark absurdities of the script. This is not gallows humour, but MRI machine mirth.
Physically, she could do more to make the extent of the character’s condition clear. Her presentation of autism is most convincing when she has a specific action to perform, for example when bashing tunelessly but gleefully on a tiny toy piano. Some campaigners for disabled rights feel that it is inappropriate for able-bodied actors to fill disabled roles. Despite these understandable concerns, Porter has clearly thought long and hard about the role. It feels as though she has resolved the issue of how to connect with her audience whilst remaining believably detached from reality.
Much to my relief, the directors eschewed the tired theatrical practice of never allowing their actress to face away from the audience. Porter is free to wander the stage, and to connect with the audience, seemingly at random, whenever she lands on some new physical stimulation. The performance of the actress is so captivating because the experience she and her directors have created is so deeply personal. As an audience member, I felt like a stuffed animal in Spoonface’s bedroom, a quiet intruder into her private inner world. The Burton Taylor is a small enough venue that this sense of intrusion will hopefully be preserved, and allow whole audiences into inside the unique mind of Spoonface.
Spoonface Steinberg will be playing at the BT Studio from Tuesday 22nd to Saturday 26th October. Tickets are available here
