Grace Wilson's "Gia Orphelia" is a one woman play about a young female actor who faces a career crisis during a residency workshop working on shakesperean performance- it's very much a performer's piece with a lot of jokes that are very much for anybody who's ever been exposed to the rougher end of an acting class. Like most monologues, it's distinctly internal and personal, showing the inner insecurities of a performer who may just about be aging out of her dreams at 29 (at 52, having aged out of a lot of dreams, I can recognise the pain but also know that it's a transition to the Next Thing). There's some interesting twists and turns to the narrative, but this is very much a play that sits in the trauma rather than finds a way through - and its power works in that moment.
Annie Stafford owns the role absolutely, shifting personas between narrator, mentor, classroom colleague and disengaged partner, and keeping us with her as her emotional spirals get more and more intense. She's constantly giving us something to connect to whether it be sarcasm, naked desires, some startling physicality or emotional stillness.
Director Jo Bradley stages it mostly reaosoably well, though I'm not sure the courtyard space has been used as well here as it has in the past - there may be financial or logistics reasons why a more intimate configuration (a la "Pony" staged by Griffin here in 2023) hasn't been used - the opening and closing scenes in particular are up against the back wall of the stage which creates a distancing effect for these that makes it take a little more time than it should to warm to the play (when we move into the workshop and Stafford is able to use the whole space, the play comes alive).
This is probably a play for anybody who is an aspiring actor or who knows one, or who knows what it's like to see dreams go into the rear vision mirror. It's funny, it's got a lot of heart and soul and it's a tight 75 minutes.
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