Helen Anker captures the Essence of Audrey
Posted on 12th July 2025
Having just been charmed by Helen Anker’s performance in The Essence of Audrey I’m trying to work out whether I’ve been beguiled by the performer or the character she played. Perhaps it’s a combination of the two. Anker lit up the stage as soon as she appeared at what we were invited to believe was the auctioning off of costumes in aid of UNICEF.
Helen Anker, in a show she wrote as well as performed, introduces us to Hepburn at the stage in her life when her humanitarian work is at the forefront, and while we sit and wait for a special guest to arrive, she regales us with anecdotes and memories culled from her acting career. It’s an imaginative conceit that sidesteps the most common of pitfalls with this sort of show – why is this person speaking to me? It also allowed Anker to reveal Hepburn’s vulnerable side. I got the sense the play was meticulously researched, and was therefore an education as well as an entertainment. Humbly self-deprecating despite her obvious talent, Hepburn is presented as a shy introvert that had stardom thrust upon her. When Ankers works her way through Moon River, is that her guitar skills we see, or is she mimicking Hepburn’s inexperience? The line is blurred, but this only adds to the verisimilitude of her performance.
If I have a quibble, it’s the exhaustive information imparted. Keen to be comprehensive, Anker seemed reluctant to let any of her research go to waste. She was at her best when sharing gossipy titbits about Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart or Fred Astaire, but just when our ears pricked up we were off again on this whistle stop tour of her film career. I’d like to have heard more about her personal life, and her charity work, which seemed to be wrapped up in a hasty codicil. Having said that, I can imagine Anker arguing, and with some justification, that it was entirely in keeping with Hepburn’s character – who she was inhabiting, after all – that such things would remain private, as the true essence of Audrey would forever remain just out of reach.