Rosie’s Brain continues at the Hope Theatre, London until 8 February 2025.
Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩
Evelyn Rose is a Californian who completed an MA in Musical Theatre at the Central School of Speech and Drama in 2023. Her gentle, low-key show does exactly what its title claims. It gives us insights into Rosie’s brain – which has “issues” – in a 60-minute musical and spoken monologue. It feels pretty truthful and I can’t help wondering whether it’s, at least in part, autobiographical, but I have no insider knowledge of whether it is.
Rosie has compulsions as a toddler, insisting, for example on ducking under the bathwater but hating it. Always, according to her mother, an “eccentric”, she later can’t talk to boys because of excessive anxiety. She compulsively confesses to absurdly minor misdemeanours. Sessions with three therapists lead to diagnoses of GAD (generalised anxiety disorder) and OCD which comes, we learn, in many forms and isn’t just about handwashing. Eventually there’s a three-year relationship with a young man called George until his issues clash with hers and it sadly all goes pear-shaped.
Rose is a singer, delivering her thoughts and emotions in plaintive songs which she has written as part of the piece and they feel intimate, because in Hope Theatre’s small space they are sung unamplified. It works reasonably well – with pleasing playing from Laoise Fleming, quietly on keys behind her. Sometimes Rose accompanies herself delicately on guitar or ukulele, occasionally in duet with Fleming.
The most impressive thing she does in the entire show is to sing a song unaccompanied, having pitched it from nowhere. Then Fleming picks it up and it’s in tune, thus demonstrating that it was pitch perfect. Few singers can do this.
Rose is also an accomplished at playing a multitude of roles. Her voice work and flexible face enable her to deliver a whole raft of characters without fuss.
It’s an interesting and moderately entertaining show but it feels a bit flat partly because it’s about “meeting” one, rather troubled character and there isn’t much variety or pacing in the narrative. The co-directors are Josh Vaatstra and Lucrezia Galeone.
Susan Elkin
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