Katherine Wyeth had a very different childhood from most. Growing up above The King’s Head Theatre Pub in London her world was filled with adults and art, beer and bohemians.

The famous venue was established in 1970 by Dan Crawford, who was Katherine’s step-grandfather (on her father’s side). Her parents later divorced, and her mother then married Dan, making him her step-father. Family dynamics can be pretty interesting sometimes [More] 

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As the houselights come up, someone nearby pronounces Girl in the Loft “a gem” – and that is a good description. Its gentle glow is enhanced by different facets of presentation as Katherine Wyeth tells her story, re-enacts her story, sings old songs, uses shadow puppetry and dances with her accompanist J R Ballantyne. The setting, designed by Anne-Lisa Noordover, features the eponymous loft allowing Katherine to rise above the claws of her unusual childhood, transplanted from the USA to England, to grow up in Islington’s King’s Head pub theatre.

A table with a fancy lamp and notebook is ‘home base’ for adult Katherine. Two gold frames receive AV images of people and places, designed by Johanna Saunders and operated by Haami Hawkins along with Chris Collie-Holmes’ dynamic lighting design, abetted by Jason Wright’s impactful sound design and composition. And throughout, pianist Ballantyne is an attentive and soothing presence at the stage-left baby grand.

Facilitated by director Fingal Pollock, all these production values along with Wyeth’s fluid performance keep the story interesting. Her driving purpose is “to tell my story to you – before it fades forever,” as Katherine writes in the programme. “Because that’s what we have as humans really – our stories… all the stories that snap together like magnets – to make a person, to make a life.” While Girl in the Loft does share key experiences of Katherine’s life to date, along with the history of the King’s Head pub and its famous and infamous alumni, it doesn’t quite coalesce as a script, to add up to more than the sum of its parts.

There is an over-arching theme of dreaming, from childhood dreams about Narnia through romantic fantasies about Cary Grant to her wondering, once transplanted as an adult and mother to NZ, whether it was all a dream – hence the need to make it ‘real’ with this show. Peter Pan sort of book-ends it, as the starting point of King’s Head Theatre founder Dan Crawford’s passion for theatre, to the final song: ‘Dream with Me’ from Leonard Bernstein’s Peter Pan.

It was in the 1980s that Katherine and her parents emigrated from New Jersey to London to join their entrepreneurial friend Dan. You need a keen ear to distinguish between Katherine’s “Dad” and “Dan”, not least once her mother divorces one and marries the other. Somehow Katherine’s relationship with Dan becomes the most important in the dramatised story, maybe because fate brings more emotion to the fore. I become concerned that her mother disappears from the story despite being involved in the theatre but she does return towards the end. As does her father.

A sort of ‘uncle’/adolescent relationship with reformed criminal and lunchtime theatre artistic director Syd Golder leads to his story being told with rudimentary shadow puppetry. (You can find Katherine’s obituary for Syd online.) Then there are her teenage break-out moments as a barmaid when loss of funding relegates the theatre to a space for hire and the ‘back bar’ becomes the site of dodgy deals.

Nevertheless, as a romantic, and doubtless influenced by some of the fare that played at The King’s Head over the years, Katherine is drawn to the early 20^th century so she peppers her performance with quotes from A E Houseman (“those blue remembered hills”) and gentle renditions of Noel Coward’s ‘London Pride’, ‘Other Little Girls’ (from The Secret Garden musical), ‘Keep Young and Beautiful’ (from 42^nd Street), ‘Look to the Rainbow’ (from Finian’s Rainbow) … while Ballantyne enhances the moods with such tunes as ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkley Square’, ‘If Your Were the Only Girl in the World’, ‘Daisy, Daisy’ …

Part of me feels the disparate story elements float adrift from each other and a stronger uniting theme would produce more universal resonance. But as an attempt to recall what feels like an elusive and fading dream, Girl in the Loft does capture an unusual life-to-date. 

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