Stevie

While the Deposit plays downstairs, with an unknown cast, a very well known actress indeed, Zoe Wannamaker, plays in Stevie on the main stage. A bit of a tour de force here as Stevie (ie the poetess Stevie Smith) is pretty much never off stage.

It's a cleverly written play, the story of Stevie's life, partly through reminiscences, from early childhood to her death in 1971 in her late sixties, but with her poetry neatly intertwined into the script. A sort of poetry version of a juke box musical.

It was interesting to me both because I knew little of her poetry, so it was an introduction to that for me, and because she is the only famous person to have come out of my dull little suburb, Palmers Green, where she lived all her life. She was certainly a strange one, both shy and liking parties, and obsessed with death. But for all that I have to say I think the Deposit was the more entertaining, and thought-provoking, evening. At a third of the price!