Tilly No-Body ****

The term ‘nobody’ tends to be bandied around a little carelessly. But if your identity is systematically removed from you, it has a chilling resonance.

Tilly Wedekind was an accomplished performer, married to Frank Wedekind, an acclaimed and influential playwright known for Spring Awakening. Frank wrote roles for Tilly, perhaps most famously performing eponymously in the "Lulu sex tragedies".

Frank began to deconstruct aspects of their married life and dramatise them on stage, having Tilly perform as a version of herself. This controlling side of his personality became the crux of their marriage, as he revelled in audiences consuming a kaleidoscopic view of the couple.

Frank was violent, promiscuous and pushed boundaries, organising threesomes and contracting syphilis from prostitutes.

The lines between reality and fiction became disquietingly blurred. Frank turned Tilly into Lulu during their married life and expected her to enact the female roles. Tilly’s identity was compromised, effectively making her his puppet. Their relationship became co-dependent, with Tilly declaring that "Frank was my life". Driven by profound jealousy and having created roles and attributed lines to Tilly’s characters, Frank would exercise leverage over her by reassigning roles or lines to other female actors. With her identity stripped away, she was in essence Tilly No-Body.

Tilly’s mental health was compromised. After a breakdown, she wanted to leave Frank and ultimately attempted suicide. This was unsuccessful, but the physical repercussions were severe, and her recuperation lasted many months. Eventually, Tilly re-emerged and found her voice, re-establishing her career. She was no longer a nobody, now ‘Tilly Somebody’.

Bella Merlin is the writer and performer. She depicts Tilly’s adult life using a blend of physical theatre, comedy, song, music and puppetry, receiving spontaneous applause when she played and sang while balancing on a ball. She is clearly a talented performer, engaging and adept. There are many threads and nuances to this tale, but there is a slight feeling that the production is somehow not quite the sum of its constituent parts.

Domestic abuse is depressingly rife, sometimes leading to femicide or suicide. At the heart of this most interesting production is one woman’s survival, empowerment and finally finding her voice in a patriarchal world.