Writers: Mike Kenny and Jenny Sealey
Director: Lee Lyford
All families have their secrets but when Jenny Sealey finds out her life is not quite what she thinks it is, she is also asked to keep that secret from everyone else in her life. Self-Raising, her one-woman show co-written with Mike Kenny, arrives at the Soho Theatre from the Edinburgh Festival which Sealey jokingly acknowledges uses theatre to share her news with strangers in the form of a stage memoir, examining what it means to grow up feeling different to the rest of your family and then find out that you really are.
Directed by Lee Lyford, this is a fully accessible show, employing a ‘terp’ or performance interpreter – Jeni Draper at the press viewing – who is fully integrated into the performance, interacting with the protagonist throughout rather than standing apart, and surtitles projected onto a screen behind Jenny and Jeni are also narrated by Sealey’s son Jonah. Self-Raising opens with physical descriptions of the individuals on stage and the set and encourages a relaxed environment in which audience members can leave and return at any point during the 60-minute performance.
Self-Raising has two primary strands; the first puts young Jenny in the centre of the story, the eldest of four daughters with a glamorous mother and reliably sweet father. When Jenny loses her hearing she endures years of being told by doctors that she needs to adapt to the hearing world and not learn to sign. The second and more dominant part of the show recounts adult Jenny’s discovery of a series of family riddles and the frustrating conversations with her strong-willed mother.
Sealey’s style is warm and engaging, explaining the various revelations with a comic flourish using a series of photographs as props – a symbolic theatrical device emerging from the profession of her father and son. Sealey certainly enjoys the shock of these disclosures and the opportunity to add a wry comment or dazed exclamation that heightens the humour, bringing the audience along as she recreates subsequent conversations with her mother, a personality who comes through strongly in Sealey’s re-enactment.
The rest of the family, and even beloved father Bob, are less clearly drawn and the wider ramification of these secrets is not fully revealed, not even for Sealey who takes them in her stride with little comment on how this affected her sense of self and connection or distance from her siblings. A tricky relationship with her mother is also underplayed and while the show enjoys her comic dismissal of Sealey’s questions, how this altered their relationship and Sealey’s own reflections on her role in the family before and after the news is unaddressed.
There is also unused potential in Sealey’s comments on being the only deaf person in a hearing family and while the show opens with some explanation of her hearing loss, there is more to say about the pressure placed on a child to adapt by insensitive medics and any long term effects on Sealey’s sense of self, particularly where the family discoveries intersect with that development of identity into her adult life.
Runs until 17 February 2024 and continues to tour
