Rolling With Laughter

Natasha Wood enters the stage in her electric wheelchair, (she was born with Spinal Muscular Atrophy), and from the start you know this is not to be a tale of triumph over adversity. Wood shares snapshots of her life growing up in middle England, her family and her ambitions. It is the story of a life made less ordinary due to the condition with which she lives, but one lived with no self-imposed boundaries, at least none that I could discern.

“I’ll give you five pounds to take her away, and £20 not to bring her back”, joked Wood’s dad when she was eight years old. She went to school at the local hospital. When she was 18 she went to live in an old people’s home. You want to laugh, and you do, because Wood’s delivery, passion and emotion is all that you experience on the stage at the New End Theatre in the current run of her one woman show Rolling With Laughter.

Wood relives childhood memories of working on her parents market stall, the college years, where she met and fell in love with her husband, her work that took her all over the country and abroad. Throughout, the autobiographical tales, Wood leaves no room for doubt about the reduced autonomy she faces every day due to her disability. However, what is also clear is that she does not let it stop her from pursuing her life goals, chatting up fit blokes, or dealing with one of any number of life problems faced by a woman trying to live in the 21st century. I thought the performance was captivating and fresh. The script is sharp, wry in places, deeply emotional in others.

The production itself was minimal. Sound and lighting offered subtle changes in mood, flow and circumstance. The stage was dressed simply with a table leaving room for Wood to roll, spin and dance the full length and breadth of it.

Rolling with Laughter continues at the New End Theatre until October 21st 2007.

Written by Natasha Wood and Beverly Saunders
Directed by Cameron Watson

This review was written for Extra Extra.