Walking into The Splendid, a restored building in the lower part of Strait Street known as The Gut, I couldn’t help recalling my first visit to the Wilton’s Music Hall in East London that claims to be the oldest music hall in the world.

The history of the venue perfectly complements the colourful story of Ernest Boulton, who, together with Frederick William Park was a Victorian cross-dresser and suspected homosexual. The pair appeared as defendants in a celebrated trial in London in 1871, charged “with conspiring and inciting persons to commit an unnatural offence” and thereby scandalising Victorian London.

Well known British writer/playwright Neil Bartlett has long been instrumental in documenting the history of gay culture in Britain. His wonderful script, Stella, has managed to breathe new life into one of the most intriguing stories of late 19th-century London as well as explore the depths of human identity, sexuality and gender.

His text, essentially a two-hander, resembles a musical duet for two voices of the same person; occasionally in harmony, frequently in counterpoint.

The play, which was put up by the Beau Belles, opens with a middle-aged Ernest Boulton sitting alone in semi-darkness waiting in dread for a knock on his front door; a knock that could be the taxi man taking him to the hospital for his throat cancer surgery or the ominous knock of the grim reaper that he feels is drawing ever closer.

The endless waiting and the impending doom is strongly reminiscent of Samuel Beckett’s work and the rhythms of the text owe much to the techniques employed by the Irish playwright.

The scene then shifts to the brightly lit dressing room of a younger Ernest Boulton (36 years younger to be exact) busy transforming himself into the glamorous and sensual Stella eagerly waiting for Arthur, his lover, to knock on his door. Just like Beckett’s Godot, Arthur however keeps Stella waiting.

The play continues to shift our attention between these two extreme versions of the same person until towards the very end the two are no longer poles apart but two halves of the same persona; neither male nor female, neither old nor young.

Director Polly March cleverly uses a split-screen technique to stage the piece in the cramped confines of one of the rooms of the Splendid. She puts the older Boulton (exquisitely played by Benjamin Milton) on a slightly raised platform on one side of an old stone fireplace and the young Bou  her side at his dresser.

The dresser has a mirror frame with the mirror removed so when Stella addresses herself in the ‘mirror’, she addresses the audience too. This simple staging detail helps the audience identify with Stella’s story in a powerful way.

Both actors gave beautifully nuanced performances with an economical, yet precise, use of facial and body gestures that bring the character to life and imbue the piece with a dream-like quality.

Gatesy Lewis is fast becoming a household name on ourstages despite his young age, and this performance should solidify his credentials further. I was very impressed with Benjamin Milton and I look forward to seeing him in more productions in the near future.

As the lights faded on the middle-aged Boulton softly singing through his physical andemotional pain, his younger alter ego stood motionless.

Stella’s story was suddenly no longer over a century old and thousands of miles away but happening right there in the corner of a top floor room on Strait Street.

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