Review: Stella at the Unity Theatre ****

Robert Farquhar’s sharply scripted, comi-tragic one-woman play Stella charmed audiences when it was given an initial outing at the Unity Theatre’s Up Next Festival earlier this year.

It sold out then and it’s practically sold out again on its pre-Christmas return to the Hope Place stage with the kinetic Kalli Tant reprising her role as the lead (in fact all the play’s) character(s).

Pleasingly for a story about a young woman on a tumultuous journey of self-discovery, the audience at the full house Friday matinee, which opened the show’s mini-run, was packed with teenage school pupils and young people from nearby LIPA.

We first meet Stella, dazed and confused, waking in a room she doesn’t recognise after a night she can just about remember.

A ball of pacing energy and fizzing, tumbling thoughts – vocalised in fast, furious and funny breaking-the-fourth-wall storytelling fashion, Tant’s protagonist proceeds to take us on a relentless rollercoaster ride which encompasses an aunt from the ‘no-nonsense, Carla Lane back-to-backs’ school of Scouse sisterhood, a broken down relationship, uncomfortable encounters, a missing-in-action dad and membership of a ‘mediocre’ indie rock band with some deep creative differences.

But it becomes clear as Farquhar’s tale develops that Stella’s cocky self-confidence and ballsy attitude is pure bravado, a veneer underneath which lies raw vulnerability. She’s a young soul adrift on a sea of troubles and lacking a much-needed lifeline.

Under Chris Tomlinson’s direction, the frenetic pace creates its own sense of stress and tension in the room – and a helplessness as you watch Stella tip into a destructive, downward spiral with no one to lean over and offer a supportive hand or a much-craved hug.

It's a hugely challenging role but Tant gives a tour-de-force performance; in addition to bringing Stella to vivid, three-dimensional life, she must turn on a dime to play every other passing figure too, and she does it all with impressive aplomb.

In the first performance of this latest run, Tant suffered every actor’s worst nightmare when she had a momentary brain freeze. But she regrouped (encouraged by an audience which was vocal in its support) and plunged back into the pacy narrative with an admirable fearlessness.