The Essence of Audrey by Helen Anker. The Brockley Jack Studio Theatre, 410 Brockley Road, London SE4 to 16 March 2024.

4✩✩✩✩ Review: William Russell.

“Audrey Hepburn brought vividly to life.”

Helen Anker has crafted a splendid one woman play in which Audrey Hepburn talks to an audience who have come to her home in Switzerland to see her collection of gowns from some her greatest roles. It is a fund raising event for UNICEF for which she was an Ambassador, a role she took very seriously. The promised host is late and Audrey must entertain the visitors. Anker conjures up the woman very well indeed, looks enough like her to be credible, has stories to tell about her past and even manages to sing Moon River while playing the guitar sounding just like the real thing. It starts with her childhood in Holland during Nazi occupation, life with a domineering mother, without a father who left them when she was six or seven and how she trained to be a ballerina. Eventually they got to London, Marie Rambert offered her a scholarship but the privations of war meant she did not have the stamina and at 5ft 7” was just too tall. But she did have a career dancing in West End shows, secured some bit parts in British films and was discovered by Colette, who decided she was Gigi and that led to Broadway and to her first film – Roman Holiday and an Oscar. After that there is a string of hit movies for years in most of which she was dressed by Givenchy and became a style icon as well as an accomplished until something starts to go wrong and she takes a break from filming for several years. We get the marriages to Mel Ferrer, to Andrea Dotti, the attempts to have children – she has a son by each of her husbands – and how she found refuge from the world of stardom in her house in Switzerland where she spent the last years of her life with her partner Robert Wolders. An hour in Anker’s company passes delightfully, her performance is pitch perfect, and if there was more to Hepburn then Hepburn is not telling. And there was. Her will left her estate to her two sons to be divided equally but that led to all sorts of trouble – however Audrey was not to know. Anker ends by urging her audience to contribute to UNICEF which seems the perfect ending to a story told from Audrey’s point of view.

Cast

Helen Anker – Audrey Hepburn.

Creatives

Director – Michael Vivia.