Ross Willis’s Wonder Boy deservedly won the 2023 Writers’ Guild award for best play following its premiere run at Bristol Old Vic in 2022. Now it is revived for a UK tour, and this week Liverpool Playhouse is lucky to be the first of 10 venues it is visiting after reopening in Bristol earlier this month.
Sonny, played by the outstanding Hilson Agbangbe, is a talented budding artist with a stammer, which means that even saying his own name is almost impossible for him. This and the recent loss of his mother leave him frustrated, angry and rebellious, until he has the good fortune to fall under the care of a visionary teacher, Miss Wainwright. Wainwright (in an inspired performance from Eva Scott) dares to try and help Sonny in ways that will work individually for him, rather than following the one-size-fits-all curative approach set out by the tyrannical school head, Miss Fish.
Wainwright helps Sonny to focus on the things that he does well, like his drawing, and to find an inner confidence that will help him become a strong communicator, and not allow his difficulty with public speaking make him feel powerless any more. She also looks beyond the one outward manifestation that most people see and hear from him, to find the boy inside and understand his real anguish and ambition.
Sonny is followed around throughout the play by an imaginary shadow, Captain Chatter, who embodies the stammer like a demon that lives in his head, telling him to avoid all situations that involve speaking to people. This deaf and non-verbal character is performed by Ciaran O’Breen, who uses a combination of BSL and visual vernacular to play the role. O’Breen makes the super-hero-garbed Captain Chatter both hugely expressive and very witty. Although he comes straight from the pages of one of Sonny’s comic books, he is more of a millstone than an inspiration, and Sonny’s fight to rid himself of this control is central to the story.
Following Miss Fish’s insensitively delivered decision to cast Sonny in a school production of Hamlet, he is helped by Wainwright to find strategies for overcoming his fear of appearing in front of people. Another unlikely ally is a fellow student, the rebellious Roshi, played with huge energy by Naia Elliott-Spence. Roshi is set to play the lead in the production, and her description of Shakespeare’s plot is pricelessly funny. The bard himself puts in a surreal appearance too, to offer his own bizarre form of encouragement.
Jessica Murrain completes the cast in the dual roles of the almost villainous Miss Fish, and as Sonny’s mum, in a series of memory-like appearances. These, as well as a number of heart-to-heart scenes between Sonny and Wainwright, are extraordinarily moving.
The play is supported throughout by creative captioning, with the entire text projected dynamically around and behind the performers on stage in fonts that enhance the nuance of its meaning.
Wonder Boy, which is directed with great sensitivity and perfect pacing by Sally Cookson, is both inspiring and educational. Clearly this should be popular with schools audiences, but it has a message for us all about the importance that we place on verbal skills and our reluctance to embrace a broader range of communication. It also has a lot to say to those in the education system, about looking beyond what seems obvious and seeing the real challenges and potential that hide behind something like, for instance, a stammer.
After this visit to Liverpool, Wonder Boy continues its tour of the UK with dates booking to the end of November.
Star rating: 5 stars
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The cast of Wonder Boy - Picture by Steve Tanner
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