Becoming Simone by Liz Garland

I am pretty certain that all of us at some moment in our lives have asked ourselves, “What am I doing here?”, “Is this really me?”, “There has to be more to life than this.” Isn’t this what the mid-life crisis is all about?

Liz Garland has grabbed this subject by the hormones and written her play “Becoming Simone” from a woman’s point of view.

The main character Simone, played by Liz Garland, takes the audience into her confidence from the start. She describes her life as a forty something woman living in a nice house, in a nice suburb in a nice part of Surrey with a husband earning a six figure salary to pay for it all but as she mentions later “can’t operate the fucking dishwasher”.

Her life is empty and she is living a pretence associated with a good standard of living of being a happy person but she isn’t happy. To escape all of this fakery she decides to head to Hull on the Northeast Coast of England with nothing but a Waitrose carrier bag. It is actually “A bag for life” containing a few possessions.

Not for Simone the luxury of a National Express coach, a seat all the way on an East Coast train or driving the family car. Instead, she walks about two hundred and fifty miles and why Hull?

“Why not?”

Hull is where her Nan used to live and she uses her address as an excuse to contact the locals who are collectively known as “Hullians” or “Hullensians” and ask for directions. That question is her way into her new life.

Simone knows she is telling a lie or two when she wangles a flat above a dodgy antique shop that sells tat. We also know she is telling another lie when she sets up a business of a rather personal nature in the flat. All of this is reinforced with her talking to the audience bringing them into her little conspiracies which allows us to laugh at the jokes at the expense of the other four characters.

The cast is small. In addition to Liz Garland, Jan Rawson plays Simone’s Mum and Beryl and Royce Cronin playing Don and Mark. Both of them doubled up their roles so skilfully that I had to take a few seconds to realise they were actually the same person playing two roles. A bum bag and red crunchy plastic mac in Hull can make all the difference.

Jo Billingham, the director and Artistic Director of the Forest Forge Theatre Company, lifted the play from Liz Garland’s script to auditions, table reads, scratch performances, rehearsals, dress rehearsals and to performance in two years.

With a cast of three, a back room team of four that includes Josh Whatsize the producer and the absolute minimum of props this production is ideally suited for small, cosy and intimate studio theatre environments such as the theatre in New Milton.

Yes, I can see it is about that period in life called the “change” or whatever it is called from a woman’s point of view. Liz has brought this to the stage with a tight script, wit, humour and pathos. The ending has a twist; a punchline call it what you will that reminded me of Pirandello’s Henry IV.

Please don’t forget that us chaps also go through a bit of a change when we hit a certain age but as for walking to Hull to get through it? I don’t think so. We might just max out on the credit card and buy that two plus two Porsche 911 Cabriolet instead.