You're Not Like the Other Girls Chrissy

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One-person plays are always a risky affair, requiring an actor and writer with enough talent to carry the performance alone. Thankfully, You're Not Like the Other Girls, Chrissy has both of these in Caroline Horton.

We join the eccentric Christiane in a queue in a Paris train station at the end of the Second World War. While she waits for the train that will take her to her English fiance, she tells us the story of how she met him, how they were separated by Hitler's armies, and her repeated, valiant attempts to be reunited with him. Aside from Horton's humour - intelligent but gentle enough not to undermine the simplicity of the play - the performance is made by its inventive staging. The grubby, claustrophobic attic setting of Pleasance Above perfectly evokes the oppressive atmosphere of wartime Paris while the contents of Christiane's suitcases mirror each location. A suitcase full of flowers with a painted sky-blue lid represents the English countryside and later, a white scale-model of Paris arises out of another.

Aside from the awkward, jarring moment Christiane pops red, white and blue balloons to symbolise German bombs, the play flows naturally to the end, even moving some of the older audience members to tears. Both the punters and the actress playing Christiane sit in humbled silence as they watch a video of the real Christiane - now in her late nineties- returning to France with her husband of sixty years. Perhaps because Horton is playing her grandmother, the play feels satisfyingly organic and complete: Fact and fiction, young and old, the past and the present combine in a performance that is funny but also incredibly moving.