Barbara Smith – photo © Dorsetborn Theatre

The stage is set. For the online mistress Crystal to humiliate her customers with suitable accessories and outfits all to hand. Or is it the classroom teacher Cam, dressed schoolmarm neat, dreaming of meeting a nice man to settle down with?

This new play written by Erin de Frias looks at the complicated life of one woman with (at least) two identities is directed by Rohan Gotobed with considerable panache.

In a remarkable performance Barbara Smith, known to many as Dana Monroe in Eastenders, plays the two sides of this divided personality and another thirteen different characters including her school pupils, her father, his partner, her romantic target and his daughter and several others. It is a considerable achievement and she manages to make every character clear and obvious, not easy when taking on multiple roles.

Hints of remembered scenes from her past suggest that Cam has more than a bit of rage subdued within, and her humiliation of her clients while she is Crystal starts to sound increasingly real. Cam starts dating the local baker, whose teenage daughter she also teaches. As the relationship deepens she starts to wonder if some of Crystal’s clients may be amongst the real people she knows in the village, then starts to wonder whether the baker himself knows her alter ego.

Barbara Smith drives through this monologue at a relentless pace right up until the shockingly dramatic climax. Her performance is so convincing that we leave full of questions – about the roles we expect women to play in life, the constraints upon them, about the seeming inevitability that we all have a secret life we may want to keep hidden. It also raises questions about mental health and stability and how still these issues are hidden by most people.

The play has reached the end of the current run here at The Garage in Norwich tonight, but should this production resurface it will be one to watch out for. And I shall await with great interest the next time that Barbara Smith takes to the stage or screen, a captivating performer.

© Julian Swainson
Norwich Eye

6 June 2026

 

More info at dorsetborn.co.uk