Hello and welcome to this audio introduction to A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing at the Young
Vic theatre, from the novel by Eimear McBride, adapted for the stage by Annie Ryan.
The production premiered at the Samuel Beckett Centre in 2014 as part of the Dublin
Thatre Festival, and was produced by the Corn Exchange.
The audio described performance is on Saturday 5th March at 2.45pm. There will be a
touch tour at a time to be confirmed. If you’d like to book for the touch tour, please call the
Young Vic box office on 020 7922 2922. We’ll repeat this intro in the auditorium at 2.30pm.
A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing will be described by Eleanor Margolies.
The show lasts for an hour and a half with no interval. This introduction will take about six
minutes to listen to. It gives an overview of the set, characters and costumes.
A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing is a one-woman show performed by Aoife Duffin. It’s set in
an abstract, spare landscape. As well as the girl of the play’s title, Duffin embodies all the
people in the girl’s life, shifting voices and facial expressions in an act of sustained
ventiloquism.
The programmes tells us that the author of the novel, Eimear McBride, grew up in Sligo
and Mayo in Ireland. At seventeen, she moved to London to study acting at the Drama
Centre. At twenty-seven, she wrote A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing, and spent most of the
next decade trying to have it published. It went on to win the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for
Fiction and several other prizes.
Adaptor and director Annie Ryan describes in a Foreword her experience of reading the
book: ‘I was sitting bolt up, gasping in horror as the novel came to its breathtaking close.’
Ryan was sure the story was performable, because ‘to make sense of it… I had to read it
aloud … It wants to be heard.’ Ryan goes on: ‘I knew the embodiment of the characters
would have to be handled very carefully, to somehow prioritise the voice rather than the
picture.’
The Young Vic’s Maria is a studio theatre, with raked bench seating facing a compact
stage. Audience members enter from the back of the auditorium, and make their way down
a central staircase, filling the benches on either side. Seating is unreserved, but please get
in touch or ask at the touch tour if you would like to reserve a place near the front.
Before us is a dimly lit stage, about seven metres wide and five metres high, framed in flat,
black fabric. The stage is raised about a metre from ground level, and a scattering of
sawdust can be made out on its surface. A faint, warm yellow light on the right side
catches the thin curls of wood, lending them a golden glow.
As the lights rise, it becomes apparent that the stage is covered in black soil, with sawdust
scattered on top. Flush against the front of the stage is a lighter, grey-green semi-circle,
about four metres in diameter. This grey area gives an impression of dust or ash. In fact, it
is a 1970s-style sage-green carpet, decorated with forest green swirls. This carpet covers
the stage, lying underneath the soil and sawdust: domestic and natural, inside and outside,
dirty and clean all mixed up together.
This platform extends back about three metres, leaving a gulf of about a metre between it
and the black, back wall. Strung horizontally across the top of the back wall are five
rectangular blocks of wood. Lights shine down from the rig above, bouncing off the
reflective wood so that they seem to emanate light themselves. Sometimes the quality of
light is cold and harsh, giving them the feel of fluorescent strip lights; at other times it is
warmer, suggestive of natural light, the intensity gradating from one block to the next.
The performer, Aoife Duffin, is a woman in her twenties, of slight but athletic build. Her
straight, brown hair is parted near the centre and pulled back in a low ponytail. She’s
barefoot and wears a blue-grey T-shirt over a long-sleeved, grey top, and brushed cotton,
pyjama bottoms with navy, grey and purple checks — as if she’s spending a day lazing
around at home. Duffin has a pale, shrewd face, with a domed brow, strong straight nose
and dimple in her chin. Her lips are full, and when she smiles, she shows small, straight
front teeth. She plays the ‘Girl’ of the title, beginning with life before her own birth, and
addressing her brother – or us in the audience – as ‘you’. As Duffin channels many
different voices — the girl’s mother, brother, grandfather, schoolfriends, aunt and uncle,
among others — her face alters completely, one moment appearing childlike and guileless,
the next furrowed by years of worry. These transformations are supported by Sinéad
Wallace’s lighting design, which makes use of strong, cold side lighting, turning Duffin’s
face ghostly and gaunt, and casting long, crisp shadows. Often, only a small area of the
stage is lit. Duffin also deftly and subtly changes her physicality: her brother hangs his
arms by his side, with a dozy, gormless expression or his brow deeply furrowed; her
grandfather stands tall, arms crossed, frowning deeply as he peers down at his
grandchildren; her mother rears back, eyebrows ever ready to lift in disapproval. ‘In
contrast, a visiting aunt and uncle smile brightly – the aunt brittle and poised, the uncle
with merry, twinkling eyes. And a sophisticated college student leans on one hip, two
fingers holding an imagined cigarette.
Please note that due to the production’s emphasis on words and voices, the audio
description during the performance will be fairly minimal.
Cast and creative team
Performer
Aoife Duffin
Director
Annie Ryan
Music and Sound Designer
Set Designer
Mel Mercier
Lian Bell
Lighting Designer
Sinéad Wallace
Costume Designer
Katie Crowley
Assistant Director
Eoghan Carrick
Producer
Lucy Ryan
Audio described performances coming up at the Young Vic Theatre
‘If You Kiss Me, Kiss Me’ with Jane Horrocks
Saturday 2 Apr 2016 3pm
‘Blue/Orange’ by Joe Penhall
4 Jun 2016 2.30pm
That’s the end of the introductory notes. If you’d like to book for the touch tour, please call
the Young Vic box office on 020 7922 2922.