Jenny Sealey tells us at the off that this production is not what it was supposed to be. She set out with the idea of adapting Anne Fine’s book Flour Babies before real life took hold of her creativity and she changed course.
Self-Raising marks a changing of direction in more ways than one: the artistic director of disabled-led theatre company Graeae, Sealey becomes both performer and joint writer, with Mike Kenny, marking her debut as a playwright for the stage.
Flour Babies still features somewhat but this is Sealey’s coming-of-age story about growing up as a Deaf person and about a family with a host of buried secrets that leak out over the course of this one-woman show.
In a production directed by Lee Lyford, there is little artifice to her testimony, which is guileless and endearing with witty moments but also shocking in its secrets, spanning from abuse at the hands of a doctor to a parental love triangle, of sorts. The set’s row of cupboards is simple but works as a metaphor of all that is withheld from Sealey as a child by the formative people in her life.
The generational prejudices towards Deafness are shocking – her family being advised not to teach her to sign because she has to learn to “live in the hearing world”, and examiners at hospital shouting, as if angry, during hearing tests.
The narration is accompanied by captions, sign language and audio description, along with family pictures and voiceovers from Sealey’s son, Jonah: “This is a picture of me as a toddler. Extremely cute.”
It is sweet, nostalgic, full of whimsy, although sometimes it feels rather too much like being led through a family album without quite enough focus or depth. The tone stays explanatory, skating through big and small moments, and Fine’s story could perhaps be intertwined in a more theatrical way.
Yet Sealey wins you over with her charm and the simplicity of the piece gathers a slow-burn emotional force. As we enter, she hands out bags of flour, which she names and holds like children – it remains puzzling until the final moments, when the payoff is a moving one.
At Pleasance Dome, Edinburgh, until 27 August
