Originally published by L.S. Media. March 16th 2011.

Cast: Sarah Leaver.

The mystery and beguilement that surrounds the treatment and life of an individual who was born Intersexed is gently and lovingly portrayed by Sarah Leaver in the Unity Theatre’s latest production Memoirs of a Hermaphrodite.

Drawing on the real life story of Herculin Barbin, Sarah Leaver takes the audience through sections of Herculin’s life, part voyeuristic, part shrouded in fine Greek mythology, the audience is taken through how the young Herculin’s life was changed from being a young girl at the nunnery in La Rochelle and falling in love to her own discovery, and that of everybody else that she was born an Hermaphrodite.

The set is as sparse and empty as the young Herculin’s life appears to be when she is sent from the confines and closeness of the nunnery to the seedy underbelly that envelopes Paris during the 1850’s. The audience’s attention is carefully and charismatically drawn away from the stage by Sarah’s performance as she shows with recognisable class her aptitude to the theatre and the authority to own the character to its conclusion.

It is the beguiling and innocent nature of that portrayal of one of nature’s finest mysteries which had the Unity Theatre audience spellbound as Sarah immersed herself fully into the role. The odd knowing gesture to the audience here, the hard pleading stare to others as she looked for and gained the sympathy and understanding of her plight and the terror she found herself in as reality of her situation become more apparent.

As a piece of theatre and as the definitive one hander, Sarah Leaver should be congratulated for bringing a hard hitting and rarely understood phenomenon subject as being intersexed to the forefront of national theatre. Distressing to those it affects and confusing, possibly distrusting to the majority it doesn’t touch, there are no better words to describe the play than those used by Sarah as Herculin “‎‘a man with wings that cannot fly, watch him as he shuffles by”. Trapped between two worlds and yet a spy in both.

Exquisite!!!

Ian D. Hall