Almost 10 by Raphaele Moussafir, Pulse Festival, Saturday June 5, Sir John Mills Theatre
Presented by Tangram Theatre Company and directed by Daniel Goldman, this was a one woman monologue that won a Must See nomination from The Stage at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and it was easy to see why.
Caroline Horton is an amazing actress with such a range of facial expressions and body language she can almost convey a whole scene without words. Set in the nineties, this was life through the eyes of a 9 year old misfit who hates her family and her school and has just one friend, Hortense, with whom she gets up to all sorts of mischief.
In the course of the play we experience her joys of making nuisance calls, her failures inviting people to her birthday party, her frustration with her parents holiday cottage in Wales, her difficulties in reconciling her Jewishness with her Britishness, her dysfunctional school life and the tragedies that can only befall you when you are 9.
Some of the language was a bit unnecessary and there were a couple of references that made me feel a little uncomfortable but on the whole this was a superb piece of writing and an acting tour de force.
Suzanne Hawkes
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