Midway through her mesmerising autobiographical one-person play The Glad Game, which receives its London debut at Hampstead Theatre after premiering at Nottingham Playhouse last year, Phoebe Frances Brown states: “You don’t have to do much to be an actor; just to be able to speak and remember lines. Two very basic things.”
It’s an understatement that defines the raison d’être of the show because, as she acknowledges earlier in the play, you have to be supremely optimistic to try to be an actor. But to remain dedicated to the notoriously unstable and dicey choice of acting as a career when you have been diagnosed with a stage 3 astrocytoma, a rare and incurable brain tumour that affects the region that controls your speech, language and memory? That’s going to need an extra hefty dose of optimism that is impervious to the physical and emotional ravages such an aggressive illness can wreak on your body and personality.
Brown has to assimilate the devastating news and its bleak prognosis around the same time her fledgling career is about to take off, in the form of an offer of a role in the National Theatre’s production of Small Island directed by Rufus Norris. It’s not lost on Brown that landing a part in a play on the biggest stage in one of the world’s most renowned theatres is a pinnacle of an actor’s dreams.
While undergoing radiotherapy and chemotherapy, Brown finds the inspiration to forge ahead in the figure of Pollyanna, a little girl in a Disney film who “had the courage and resilience to say yes… even in the saddest of times, there is always something to be glad about.” Pollyanna calls this The Glad Game.
In her quest to extract as much joy as possible from the reality of her situation, Brown is buoyed up by loving support from her family and their indomitable examples of living life to the fullest. Her brother Dom coins a rousing mantra – “you’re Phoebe F—— Brown” – that she clings to when the odds, auditioning for a role in a play, for instance, seem insurmountable. Her friends from her feminist comedy sketch collective Major Labia are on hand to provide the respite of black humour while the steadfastness of new boyfriend, “sexy cartoon mouse” Jake, who is repulsed by overt romantic gestures, gives her further emotional succour.
