BWW Reviews: WAITING FOR STANLEY, Greenwich Theatre, October 13 2011

Waiting for Stanley is an almost wordless one-woman show about a wife standing on a railway station platform in expectation of her husband's return on leave from serving in World War II. If that set-up sounds unprepossessing, it's because it is, but, in the hands of Leela Bunce, the magic of theatre weaves its spell and an extraordinary hour ensues.

What appears to be the detritus of a rundown wartime railway station provides (quite literally) a box of tricks, as suitcases transform into radios, cribs, typewriters and many other props. These (and a lump of dough - would you believe) allow Ms Bunce to show off skills as a mime, a puppeteer, a clown and as an actress equally at ease with laugh out loud pratfalls and with articulating the bittersweet poignancy of separation.

And that's really what the show is about. What starts off as a series of apparently unrelated vignettes of wartime life builds into a mosaic picture of how life was for London's women during the war. There's the getting by with ration book recipes, the excitement of leaving a job as a typist and starting one as a motorcycle courier, and, most of all, the ache of separation from husband at the front and child evacuated to the country, with only letters to hold on to.

Waiting for Stanley is an intimate, affectionate portrayal of the Home Front and the women who "manned" it. It's a story more known now than it was a generation ago, but Ms Bunce's range of talents and her empathy for women now at very advanced ages, shine through this clever funny and theatrical tribute to lives in wartime.    

Waiting for Stanley is at Greenwich Theatre until 16 October.