Sunny Girl, written and performed by Beth Westbrook, and produced by HER productions lifts the lid on how someone copes with autism when everyone around them is dismissive of the condition. Actually, it doesn’t: it rips the lid off in an inspiring performance that has painful and amusing moments in equal measure.
Erin knows she’s autistic and goes through an awful struggle to make people understand that she’s not just ditzy. She spells out what the condition includes, and the traits fall into 5 broad categories that take in behavioural irregularities, masking and camouflage, obsessiveness, nerdiness, anxiety, and others that make someone stand out as “different”. The play is delivered as a set of memories from early childhood to the present day. It works.
There are moments of pain where one couldn’t help but be moved by the rejections from friends, lovers, and family, but there is also humour, expressed in a self-deprecating way. Being expelled from the Swifties (Erin dotes on Taylor Swift) has elements of both, and the characters who we don’t see, but we do hear, are evoked very well indeed. Being presented with a set of paint brushes was a moment of genuine levity where “autistic” is mistaken for “artistic”, and it was impossible not to laugh.
It’s an outstanding performance that educates as well as entertains – if that’s the correct term – and the studio at the New Adelphi Theatre in Salford was the perfectly sized space. The source of the title is revealed in the closing moments after some rapprochements with family. It was a good way to end.
There are further performances at the New Adelphi before a performance in Liverpool on the 25th.
Paul Schofield for Canal Street Online.