When Hannah Kelly – in role as Anna Kiley – gets laughs for measuring herself and writing it down on a clip board, we know we’re in good hands. You don’t even have to recognise she’s about to audition for something to find it funny. But it is an audition she’s turned up for – not that we find out what the gig is. It’s a generic experience.

There’s a domestic duologue she gets someone in the audience to feed her the lines for – and when it’s revisited we see how a simple exchange can carry all sort of subtext. Then there’s the tragic monologue. You don’t have to recognise Hermione from Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale to realise a controlling male (Leontes) is wreaking a terrible injustice of her and her child. Is that thematically relevant to what follows? I’m thinking not … except …

The clue to what Imposter Child is really about comes when Anna’s introduces herself to the casting panel. She reveals (as does the publicity material) that when she was four she entered ‘The Face of Wanganui’ (that’s how they spelled it in the 90s) and won! She totally owns it too: “I convinced Dad to let me.” Yes I know he could and maybe should have vetoed it … (Is this the converse of the Leontes syndrome or am I over-thinking it?)

Anyway, now Anna is riddled with self-doubts that are entertainingly dramatised, compelling our laughter even if we feel a twinge of compassion. Director Neenah Dekkers-Reihana also operates the light and sound effects that hype the gut-wrenching depths of doubt before Anna snaps out of it: hey she’s a big girl now …

Or is she? We all have a child inside us that resurfaces when we are vulnerable. I don’t want to say too much about how this emerges because the surprises are too good to spoil. But the physicality, visual imagery and self-aware humour elevate it way beyond tortured soul psychodrama, even if Anna does come to question whether her helper’s attempts to support her are safe.

Oh yes – there’s a second performer. I expect the Fringe blurb that calls it a ‘solo’ show was written at an early stage of development. Jake Brown’s capricious contribution must be noted even if I don’t reveal its exact nature. What I will say, though, is it involves a half mask which could, I feel, work better in commedia terms; it only occasionally animates as part of the whole being. (That’s a special skill that needs to be workshopped.) But Hannah and Jake work well together. His clappy ‘snap to attention’ authoritarianism may also link to Leontes, even though his power is, from a psychological perspective, entirely bestowed by Anna – give or take the odd bit of externally sourced conditioning from an early age.

The insights into the lot of the freelance wannabe actor hit nerve ends and funny bones for the opening night audience but that, I trust, is secondary to the true purpose of Imposter Child – although I can’t say I come away with a clear sense of what that purpose is.

We return to the audition, or half of it, then it ends somewhat abruptly. In the absence of some other level of resolution, I’d have liked to see Hannah’s Anna bust out her full-blown Hermione by way of seeing the strong woman she can be despite the subversion of the ‘imposter child’. Meanwhile it’s clear Hannah has an excellent comic sensibility. 

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