By Lucas Heap.
Sonny is a boy who longs to soar high. But he’s tethered to the ground, trapped by a stammer that cripples him with shame.
When he’s asked what stammering feels like, Sonny says: “It feels like everyone else is flying and I’m just standing still.”
Bristol playwright Ross Willis wrote Wonder Boy when he was just 20, before his critically acclaimed play, Wolfie, which follows a teenager in the care system and won Best New Play at the Writers’ Guild Awards and the Off-West End Awards 2020.
This story follows 12 year old Sonny and the struggles he faces living with a stammer. We get to see the everyday difficulties he faces and how his stammer affects everything he does – from avoiding speaking in class at all costs for fear of being mocked, to going without food as he’s too nervous to order from the canteen. We also learn about the traumatic event of his mother’s death which he believes he was responsible for.
After being postponed multiple times due to the pandemic, Wonder Boy was well worth the wait and recent RADA graduate Raphel Famotibe shines as Sonny, giving us a heartbreaking portrayal of a lonely child. Thanks to the creative team, we are treated to marvellous sequences where we experience what is going on inside Sonny’s head through projections of text and images on the backdrop highlighting the multiple thoughts that he is unable to express: “Someone hear me,” “I feel like I’m disappearing,” “Help me, I’m here!” . We also see glimpses of the cheeky chap who’d give his teachers backchat given half the chance. All of which makes it all the more saddening as we see him struggle to say his name, wrestle with any and every word, getting more frustrated and upset with each vowel he attempts to conquer.
Sonny’s life is one of hiding in the corner. He can only express himself through art and the comic book hero he creates to help him cope. Captain Chatter is Sonny’s constant shadow – a background presence played silently and with excellent mime and facial expression by Ramesh Meyappam. But as the play goes on, we see his hero turn from help to hindrance as Sonny tries to tackle his demons.
His worse nightmare happens when he’s told he has a part in the school production of Hamlet – and guess what? He gets to play the guard who says the first line in the play, no less. The screen behind Sonny drips with blood and asks him: “Are you ready to die, motherfucker?’
Step in the very wonderful – but realistically human – Deputy Head Teacher, Miss Wainwright, played expertly by Amanda Lawrence. She’s his real saviour – someone who cares more about the pupils she teaches than the paperwork she has to fill in. Slowly – and with much humour along the way – she develops his confidence, providing the audience with a beautiful teacher-student dynamic.
Sonny forms an unlikely friendship with the laugh-out-loud funny and most talkative kid in school, Roshi, played masterfully by Juliet Agnes. The scene where she describes to Sonny what the plot of Hamlet is all about is an absolute masterpiece of comedy and she really rocks the stage. “It’s basically a shit version of Lion King,” she says before launching into the storyline of ‘what has driven year 8s mad on the f**ing curriculum for years.’
Headmistress, Miss Fish (Jenny Fitzpatrick) storms on to the stage (barking at children and putting them down, albeit with a smile). The binary opposite to Miss Wainwright, she’s symbolic of the flawed education system, unable and unwilling to fully cater to anyone who doesn’t quite fit in to the norms of society.
Wainwright won’t stand for it and calls her out when she speaks over Sonny. The mild dislike they have of each other swells into a deep hatred, leading to an extremely satisfying and entertaining payoff involving Miss Wainwright yelling “F**k You!” to telling Miss Fish’s beloved cats and Miss Fish destroying Miss Wainwright’s LEGO Millennium Falcon.
Sally Cookson, the director, supplies us with a visual feast onstage. At the start of the play, Sonny and Captain Chatter can be seen zooming through the cosmos and the set design is also to be commended as the LED border and platforms all add to the comic book aesthetic . The memories and delusions of Sonny’s mum contribute to the troubled backstory of the protagonist that is often observable in comic books.
Wonder Boy made us laugh and cry – a truly heartwarming story with extremely well written characters and outstanding acting from the cast. It should be on the school curriculum any time soon.
It’s on at the Bristol Old Vic until Sat 26th March.
Pictures by Steve Tanner