Reviews of Gill Manly & Joanna Scanlan / The Elephant in the Room
“One, two, three, four, there’s no pussy at the door. Check!” shout the sold-out crowd at Matthew’s Yard. And no, we are not chanting along to Croydon’s latest grime superstar, but immersing ourselves in the heartfelt and transformative ‘playsical’ The Elephant in the Room from Gill Manly and Joanna Scanlan.
A ‘playsical’, in case you’re wondering, is described on the programme as ‘a play with a few songs. Not quite a musical, not quite a cabaret.’ The show is running for two nights as part of the Croydonites Festival of New Theatre and it is really exciting to have such bold new work commissioned locally. As Mental Health Awareness Week comes to a close, with its focus this year on body image, there couldn’t be a more fitting theatre experience to go and see.
Exploring the complex and too often unrecognised relationship between mental health and obesity, this brave and revealing project sheds new light on the path to becoming so overweight that even moving around becomes a challenge, and the reality of facing bariatric surgery. Manly unpacks her emotional baggage, ably assisted by Scanlan’s colourful and supportive Fairy Rainbow and Ellie Scanlan as Nurse Ellie, with humour, songs and charm. The jazz and cabaret spirit are ever present in the musical numbers and more than once I am reminded of the fabulous vulnerability of Sally Bowles singing through the heartache inCabaret.
Manly’s voice is wonderfully raw and the musical numbers, directed by Adrian York, bring an extra dimension to the storytelling. Comedy is very useful in exploring such a deep and often painful topic and helped me feel invited into the very personal space of the work. I was moved from laughing along with the well-received gags about Croydon to wanting to give Manly a huge hug. And looking around, mine weren’t the only shiny eyes when the lights went up. There was recognition and gratitude for the strength and honesty of Manly’s performance.
The piece resonates with people because it challenges us to confront our own preconceptions about obesity while asking us to celebrate self-compassion and acceptance. It is billed as stage one of a work in progress but already speaks with an authentic voice and is brimming with heart. I want to urge everyone to go see the next iteration of this important work and am keeping my fingers crossed for a tour.
By Helen Butlin
A ‘playsical’, in case you’re wondering, is described on the programme as ‘a play with a few songs. Not quite a musical, not quite a cabaret.’ The show is running for two nights as part of the Croydonites Festival of New Theatre and it is really exciting to have such bold new work commissioned locally. As Mental Health Awareness Week comes to a close, with its focus this year on body image, there couldn’t be a more fitting theatre experience to go and see.
Exploring the complex and too often unrecognised relationship between mental health and obesity, this brave and revealing project sheds new light on the path to becoming so overweight that even moving around becomes a challenge, and the reality of facing bariatric surgery. Manly unpacks her emotional baggage, ably assisted by Scanlan’s colourful and supportive Fairy Rainbow and Ellie Scanlan as Nurse Ellie, with humour, songs and charm. The jazz and cabaret spirit are ever present in the musical numbers and more than once I am reminded of the fabulous vulnerability of Sally Bowles singing through the heartache inCabaret.
Manly’s voice is wonderfully raw and the musical numbers, directed by Adrian York, bring an extra dimension to the storytelling. Comedy is very useful in exploring such a deep and often painful topic and helped me feel invited into the very personal space of the work. I was moved from laughing along with the well-received gags about Croydon to wanting to give Manly a huge hug. And looking around, mine weren’t the only shiny eyes when the lights went up. There was recognition and gratitude for the strength and honesty of Manly’s performance.
The piece resonates with people because it challenges us to confront our own preconceptions about obesity while asking us to celebrate self-compassion and acceptance. It is billed as stage one of a work in progress but already speaks with an authentic voice and is brimming with heart. I want to urge everyone to go see the next iteration of this important work and am keeping my fingers crossed for a tour.
By Helen Butlin
I’d got it all wrong. This wasn’t the play I was expecting.
I’d seen the festival flyers and the Facebook posts from Gill Manly and Joanna Scanlan, and was keenly anticipating their first collaborative work as part of the Croydonites Festival of New Theatre 2019. The two of them together make quite a cast: Jo is nationally well-known for her roles in Getting On, Notes On A Scandal and of course as Terri Coverley in the BBC’s The Thick Of It. Gill needs no introduction to a Croydon audience – and far beyond – as jazz diva, women’s equality campaigner and charity fundraiser.
I was also aware of Gill’s troubled history with food and body image, leading to her bariatric surgery in 2016. I’d heard her speaking about it, never in much detail, but hadn’t grasped how much of that story would be told on the Matthews Yard stage.
The Elephant in the Room was a very extraordinary performance. Part panto, with flamboyant Fairy Rainbow and the wishes that she’d borrowed from Aladdin, part musical (it’ll take me a while to forget the forlorn sight of Gill sitting singing in a mobility scooter) and part impro, in sheer honesty about the impact of eating problems on a woman’s body, it went where few would dare.
As a society, we’re slowly beginning to challenge the bitter sexist diktat: possess physical perfection – shame and concealment for those who can’t comply. The terrific ‘post baby body’ campaign recently run by Mothercare is a fine example of our progress. But it’s very early days. The Elephant In The Room was cutting edge, transgressive stuff.
This is going to be an honest review: I wanted something different. I thought the play would reflect on the nature of bariatric surgery, and the reasons why a person comes to take such a decision. These procedures seem to me a brutal assault on the body – and they have lasting impacts. These include impaired absorption of nutrients: Gill, for example, lost her hair (and, being Gill, made a riotous statement about it in the form of a peroxide crop, ending up looking cooler than ever… but still... she lost her hair). The play also intoned the list of medications and supplements needed to stay healthy after surgery which knocks out a largish tract of your colon. And just remember – what’s been done to you cannot be reversed.
So when Fairy Rainbow, played by Jo, granted Gill’s weight loss wishes, emphasising as she did so that there’s no going back, I anticipated trouble and pain. But this was Gill’s story, and her tale is of freedom regained: the freedom to move, to stand and sing at a microphone again. Freedom from Type 2 diabetes, immediately cured by the operation. Freedom from stigma: from being – and shamefully feeling – ‘the elephant in the room’.
Gill owned this story, and together, Gill and Jo told it. It’s not mine, and not up to me to say how it should feel. Respect to everyone on pushing the boundaries and truly bringing hidden experience to light.
By Elizabeth Sheppard
I’d seen the festival flyers and the Facebook posts from Gill Manly and Joanna Scanlan, and was keenly anticipating their first collaborative work as part of the Croydonites Festival of New Theatre 2019. The two of them together make quite a cast: Jo is nationally well-known for her roles in Getting On, Notes On A Scandal and of course as Terri Coverley in the BBC’s The Thick Of It. Gill needs no introduction to a Croydon audience – and far beyond – as jazz diva, women’s equality campaigner and charity fundraiser.
I was also aware of Gill’s troubled history with food and body image, leading to her bariatric surgery in 2016. I’d heard her speaking about it, never in much detail, but hadn’t grasped how much of that story would be told on the Matthews Yard stage.
The Elephant in the Room was a very extraordinary performance. Part panto, with flamboyant Fairy Rainbow and the wishes that she’d borrowed from Aladdin, part musical (it’ll take me a while to forget the forlorn sight of Gill sitting singing in a mobility scooter) and part impro, in sheer honesty about the impact of eating problems on a woman’s body, it went where few would dare.
As a society, we’re slowly beginning to challenge the bitter sexist diktat: possess physical perfection – shame and concealment for those who can’t comply. The terrific ‘post baby body’ campaign recently run by Mothercare is a fine example of our progress. But it’s very early days. The Elephant In The Room was cutting edge, transgressive stuff.
This is going to be an honest review: I wanted something different. I thought the play would reflect on the nature of bariatric surgery, and the reasons why a person comes to take such a decision. These procedures seem to me a brutal assault on the body – and they have lasting impacts. These include impaired absorption of nutrients: Gill, for example, lost her hair (and, being Gill, made a riotous statement about it in the form of a peroxide crop, ending up looking cooler than ever… but still... she lost her hair). The play also intoned the list of medications and supplements needed to stay healthy after surgery which knocks out a largish tract of your colon. And just remember – what’s been done to you cannot be reversed.
So when Fairy Rainbow, played by Jo, granted Gill’s weight loss wishes, emphasising as she did so that there’s no going back, I anticipated trouble and pain. But this was Gill’s story, and her tale is of freedom regained: the freedom to move, to stand and sing at a microphone again. Freedom from Type 2 diabetes, immediately cured by the operation. Freedom from stigma: from being – and shamefully feeling – ‘the elephant in the room’.
Gill owned this story, and together, Gill and Jo told it. It’s not mine, and not up to me to say how it should feel. Respect to everyone on pushing the boundaries and truly bringing hidden experience to light.
By Elizabeth Sheppard
Aplaysical…a play that is also a musical – that’s a new one, now. I will suspend judgement, I think.
The Matthews Yard theatre is jam-packed for the show. Men and women queue in the narrow passageway leading to the theatre; the scene is a little claustrophobic, but no more than usual for a popular play.
To begin with, as I settle into my seat, I am more concerned about space. The chairs in the auditorium are tightly packed either side of the aisle, and at first glance look adequate. But I turned left as I sat down and realised that my neighbour might be a little uncomfortable if I spread my elbows. I pulled them in. On my right, my son was scissoring his arms into his body to avoid bothering his neighbour on his right. After a few minutes I concluded that perhaps the venue is not adequate for a crowd this size.
All that was quickly forgotten as the enormous Gill Manly started singing – a powerful voice, effortlessly carrying her despair at being unloved, fat, lonely – to the audience, now quiet and spell-bound. Manly was poignant, heart-rending.
The counterpoint was provided by the ironic, wise Rainbow Fairy, played by Joanna Scanlan. Her many-hued tutu swayed and did its own magical dance as she moved around. Her gypsy headgear and glittering top were both comical and commanding.
The fairy raised a few giggles to begin with, then scattered laughter in the audience with her under-the-breath asides, eventually gaining full-throated guffaws from all. She provided the three choices that Gill had to escape her unloved body. The fairy danced and swayed on the stage with a complicit smile, Ellie Scanlan, her nurse, mincing around with her.
The surgery to make Manly ‘free’ was unrelenting and unlovely on the screen. However, when the final, slim Manly rose out of the operating table, like a butterfly from a chrysalis, and stood naked in front of the audience, except for knickers, loose flesh dangling in many rolls on her stomach, pendulous breasts resting on her waist, it was impossible not to conclude that freedom had been bought at enormous cost.
What then, is the solution? Starvation heading for anorexia? Hiding away from society, living with the black dogs of depression…? This is a work-in-progress, we are told; there is more to come. Perhaps, as the rest of the story unfolds there will be other solutions that do not involve gruesome surgery.
The four people on the stage – pianist, main protagonist, fairy and nurse – were a powerful combination that held my attention through to the end. By that time I had forgotten the tight squeeze in the seating.
by Anand Nair
The Matthews Yard theatre is jam-packed for the show. Men and women queue in the narrow passageway leading to the theatre; the scene is a little claustrophobic, but no more than usual for a popular play.
To begin with, as I settle into my seat, I am more concerned about space. The chairs in the auditorium are tightly packed either side of the aisle, and at first glance look adequate. But I turned left as I sat down and realised that my neighbour might be a little uncomfortable if I spread my elbows. I pulled them in. On my right, my son was scissoring his arms into his body to avoid bothering his neighbour on his right. After a few minutes I concluded that perhaps the venue is not adequate for a crowd this size.
All that was quickly forgotten as the enormous Gill Manly started singing – a powerful voice, effortlessly carrying her despair at being unloved, fat, lonely – to the audience, now quiet and spell-bound. Manly was poignant, heart-rending.
The counterpoint was provided by the ironic, wise Rainbow Fairy, played by Joanna Scanlan. Her many-hued tutu swayed and did its own magical dance as she moved around. Her gypsy headgear and glittering top were both comical and commanding.
The fairy raised a few giggles to begin with, then scattered laughter in the audience with her under-the-breath asides, eventually gaining full-throated guffaws from all. She provided the three choices that Gill had to escape her unloved body. The fairy danced and swayed on the stage with a complicit smile, Ellie Scanlan, her nurse, mincing around with her.
The surgery to make Manly ‘free’ was unrelenting and unlovely on the screen. However, when the final, slim Manly rose out of the operating table, like a butterfly from a chrysalis, and stood naked in front of the audience, except for knickers, loose flesh dangling in many rolls on her stomach, pendulous breasts resting on her waist, it was impossible not to conclude that freedom had been bought at enormous cost.
What then, is the solution? Starvation heading for anorexia? Hiding away from society, living with the black dogs of depression…? This is a work-in-progress, we are told; there is more to come. Perhaps, as the rest of the story unfolds there will be other solutions that do not involve gruesome surgery.
The four people on the stage – pianist, main protagonist, fairy and nurse – were a powerful combination that held my attention through to the end. By that time I had forgotten the tight squeeze in the seating.
by Anand Nair