Writer: Heloise Spring
Director: Maya Shimmin
There are two intriguing storylines in Vix and Helen which played at the VAULT Festival last week. One focuses on Helen, a teenage girl with an eating disorder. The other tells the tale of an imaginary friend dreamt up by Vix’s younger brother. Despite the fact that both plots don’t quite come together as they should, Heloise Spring’s play is pleasingly original.
Vix and Helen are both at school; it’s difficult to put an age on them. Helen appears to be more confident. She’s cool and aloof, constantly on her phone, texting or watching YouTube tutorials. We’re told that Helen’s the kind of girl who gets noticed on the streets by men who scowl at her. Vix, on the other, hand is more immature and less in control of her emotions. She’s not learnt how to deal with manspreading by the guys who sit next to her on the bus. She hardly looks at her phone at all.
The play begins in confusion. Both girls have been called into the headmaster’s office for some kind of misdemeanour. There’s talk of cyber bullying and, improbably, murder. It takes a while to realise that the victim is Jamie’s imaginary friend, Fred’s aunty, Franty for short. Her murder – their murder? – affects more than the five-year-old Jamie. His whole class feels the loss.
It’s hinted that the Jamie’s dependence on an imaginary friend is down to the Covid lockdowns when children’s social development skills were interrupted. Likewise, it appears as if Helen’s obsession with body weight is also down to lockdown, or at least the vlogs she watched during it. Interestingly and correctly, Helen is not given a diagnosis by the doctor she sees. She doesn’t have anorexia or bulimia. There are multiple other ways of having an eating disorder.
But despite these very serious issues, Vix and Helen is very funny and the two performances are strong and assured. Lucy Sherratt’s Helen is detached and wry while Vix, as played by Spring, is full of beans, messing in about the yoga that Helen takes so earnestly. Vix’s determination to find out what is bothering Helen comes with a mania that is barely stoppered.
There’s one awkward moment where Sherratt asks a member of the audience to read out loud the words of the doctor. No matter how good his person is at acting (ahem!), this aside rather spoils the double act on stage that the pair has worked so hard to achieve.
School is represented by a couple of lockers and Helen’s ordered life and Vix’s scatty approach are symbolised quite nicely by the way the two schoolgirls roll up their yoga mats. Helen’s is a neat tube, while Vix’s is an untidy splatter of foam. This attention to detail by director Maya Shimmin is impressive.
Hopefully, in the future there can be a greater synthesis between the two narrative strands, but still Vix and Helen is a highlight of the VAULT Festival’s second week.
Reviewed on 5 February 2023
