Jessica Beare and Abi Carter in Fanny and Faggot. Photograph by Ian D. Hall
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Jessica Beare, Abi Carter, Heather Madden, Harry Parker, Alex Webber-Date.
As director of the production, Rio Matchett should receive a lot of commendation for having the incredible fortitude and sheer will in putting herself and the superb cast through their paces for the play Fanny and Faggot. Not only is Jack Thorne’s play a minefield of emotions that the theatre goer may feel in parts uncomfortable with, it also forces that same theatre goer to understand the social depravity that Mary Bell was put through and what perhaps turned her head and her reasoning into one of unremitting violence.
As the audience walks into the J.E.B. room within the University of Liverpool Guild, the scattered notes proclaiming the words and feelings of Fanny and Faggot, the two young girls Mary Bell’s and Norma Bell’s (no relation) pseudonyms. The feeling of disquiet intensified as the two actors Abi Carter as Norma and Jessica Beare began the play with talk of childish things which gave the play a dramatic and unsettling appeal.
Whilst the destruction and murder of the two young boys the two girls caused can never be truly explained or ever be exonerated, the undercurrent of the two girls conversation about Mary’s mother and her own habitual habits may go a long way to understanding why Mary, portrayed with incredible sinister fascination by Ms. Beare, became the way she did. The play also highlights the way in which two people who commit the same crime can be treated so differently by the justice system. Where Norma was treated almost with softness and care, Mary was left to take the full brunt of the punishment due.
The play, which is presented in distinct and separate parts, sees the small girl become a woman nearly a decade later abscond from the detention centre for a weekend with a new friend and become almost normal as she talks to men shyly and almost with tenderness.
Ms. Matchett has certainly given a lot to the University of Liverpool’s Drama Society and it is quite right that she is able to get the very best out of a cast made up of superb students making their first steps into the acting world.
Fanny and Faggot is a chilling reminder of a crime that seems to have been forgotten by the larger society. The story of those dark days in the 1960’s North-East still has the power to shock and in this the cast and director provided much debate in a superb adaption of Jack Thorne’s play.
Ian D. Hall.