FringeReview UK 2026
Annie Wobbler (Revisited)
The Pleasance in association with Neil McPherson and Producer Jaemin Yu for the Finborough Theatre.
Genre: Adaptation, Comedic, Contemporary, Drama, Fringe Theatre, Mainstream Theatre, Short Plays, Solo Play, Theatre
Venue: Finborough Theatre
Festival: FringeReview UK
Low Down
As a dramatist herself (Maurice’s Jubilee, 2012) McAuliffe has with Arnold Wesker’s widow’s permission, updated his play written for her in 1981: It’s now Annie Wobbler (Revisited). Directed by McAuliffe it runs at the Finborough Theatre till September 26. Its Edinburgh reputation has preceded it. If you can get a ticket, as they say…
A chronological withering into the truth, McAuliffe has reinvented her masterclass for another generation.
Review
Straight from the Pleasance and Edinburgh Fringe comes a tribute to Dolly Parton. Is that right? Possibly not, though it’s included in the boppy soundscape. But in standing by your actor Arnold Wesker’s 1981 solo play, Annie Wobbler is a skewed study of Caritas. Or fidelity. Now there’s a tale. Caritas is a play Wesker wrote for Olivier Award-winning Nichola McAuliffe. Despite Wesker, McAuliffe was not chosen to perform Caritas. She here reprises the solo play he ensured she did perform back in 1984. It’s now Annie Wobbler (Revisited). As a dramatist herself (Maurice’s Jubilee, 2012) McAuliffe has with Wesker’s widow’s permission, updated it. Directed by McAuliffe it runs at the Finborough Theatre till September 26. Its Edinburgh reputation has preceded it. If you can get a ticket, as they say…
Creative faithfulness seems they keynote. And where characters gradually age throughout, a drilling down. McAuliffe has left the fourth and final part of Wesker’s script almost as it stands: Annie, the bag-lady-cum cleaner who once worked at the house of tearaway little Arnold for a family that could afford maids (really?); and who can never settle as a cleaner for more than 18 months. As she falls in love with or gets attached to the owners of the house. Running for 75 minutes, the first half-hour section is the longest, followed by 20 action-packed minutes of two very different novelists. Annie’s continually interrupted by the Waterloo Station Master (Peter Straker’s voiceover, with Richard House’s sound design becoming particularly ambient).
The others though have been reworked and updated with the accuracy of a drone. McAuliffe is quite stunning in her razor-cutting of accent, costume-changes and effortless shifts between a Z-Gen graduate and then as the two novelists and latterly, Annie. The aural impression, especially with Jennings, is of a couple of older graduates than Gen Z.
The 30-minute opening, Anna the Graduate with a belated First in French is being taken out by snobby lover (Alex Jennings’ voice no less). Then Annabella Wharton as two novelists – Irish and Scottish – of the central section revel as interviewer James Naughtie rolls easy questions. First to the Irish Jameson’s-sipping Maeve Binchy with a pinch of Edna O’Brien. And then a hardboiled A L Kennedy drizzled over with Ali Smith.
McAuliffe is deadly. The glazed charm of the gowned and floaty Binchy type with all her notebooks – a set designed by McAuliffe features racks of props. There’s two nude mannequins to flank the whole (one is Annie’s mistress later on, but otherwise they’re a rather curious choice).
As Anna McAuliffe’s lines are devastatingly updated, with her anxious shifts of tone and boots. After the tripwire Byron quote “She walks in beauty like the night” which has Anna think she’s better off in the dark, body dysmorphia kicks in with dark laughter. “This trunk surely doesn’t belong on these legs. I’d better send this lot back to Amazon….” Common through the Annie derivatives is a scorning mother, to whom Anna here aims a flak of French as if she were a barrage balloon. There’s a flurry of Imposter Syndrome, naturally most to the surface in this youngest Annie avatar.
The new points score with a frisson of recognition: “Get thee with Student Debt and Only Fans”, the alternative being pregnancy and temporary accommodation. In McAuliffe’s updating Wesker’s class wars are readily identified as breathing reptiles.
The continual insertions of the reported sexist date in his love of “innocence” both inflects and swerves McAuliffe’s Anna, continually pressurised, as ever by male expectations: including the Gen Z infected by Andrew Tate, though that’s muted here.
Jennings’ monologue and reported snippets from McAuliffe, beautifully delivered, suggests in content an older man who’d spent years pretending to distinguish between years of Chablis. He’s not a Scrote she decides, just “bloody irritating”. That’s generous, which is the whole point. Anna’s inner “heteropessimism” countered with “what the fanny wants” is up against her “Clyemnostrils”; between them Wesker and McAuliffe nail body-shaming
McAluffe’s continual shifting of stance, clothes-change and theatre business in a very busy set enhances the anxious imposter syndrome, the continual shiftiness of shifting attire.
As the two Annabellas McAuliffe’s impostering is internalised as far as the personas go. The impossibly fey Irish version, who turns steely when thinking her 1.5 million is nothing to the billions in tech bros who’ve never read a book.” There’s little flecks of updaying, about Dr Johnson’s not bothering to visit wise men at (now any) distance when you have Chat GBT. It’s an altogether genteel foray into the natural feelings of anyone’s who’s slightly bewildered by fame.
Stripping to gym-kit, Annabelle’s Scottish cougar avatar is ferocious, batting exactly the same questions with a salty put-down of reptations, social media and chat programmes from Woman’s Hour to Graham Norton. Here Annabella’s inner critic is an uncle who had stories and radio plays produced but no more. It’s a masterclass of seething and high-energy, a blow-torch away from fey.
It’s as Annie the East-End authenticity of Wesker’s original shines through, and McAliffe blazes. Her imaginary interlocutor’s Wesker himself: “one of you Jew people.” McAuliffe has hardly touched this, if at all. A study in a woman profoundly disturbed enough not to take easy options, even love (when 17, from a mistress of similar age) with an 18-months-max of jobs: which has wound Annie up at Waterloo Station: a derelict. A trolley’s disgorged and ultimately re-packed with the life displayed for over 20 minutes: it never quite reveals the source of trauma. There’s hints, but Wesker’s – and McAuliffe’s – creation remains both intact and to a degree unknowable. Where elsewhere there’s a pellucid mask, here there’s a grittier one: we see through patches darkly. Persecutors include policemen and more mildly station masters. McAuliffe twitches, makes a sly gambit, and vanishes into her trolley like a reversible genie.
When Annie leaves, there’s a whiff of Mother Courage of Waterloo Station, but also an indomitable quiddity. It’s as if the dreams of others have ground down to this. A chronological withering into the truth, McAuliffe has reinvented her masterclass for another generation. Of the run of three solo shows at the Finborough, this is incomparably the finest, and should be up for awards.
(As for Caritas incidentally, the curse continued. The soprano partner (Theresa Cahill) for whom Robert Saxton wrote his Wesker-scripted opera Caritas for in 1991, wasn’t chosen on grounds of cuteness. Those of us at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival faithfully boycotted the performance out of solidarity.)
Stage Manager Yuya Manda, Production Management Ali Day, Cover Image Felicks Topolski. Photography Stuart Allen.
The Pleasance in association with Neil McPherson and Producer Jaemin Yu for the Finborough Theatre.
General Manager Tara Marricdale, Assistant General Managers Lois Rodel, Silvia Verzaro and Isaac Woon, Resident Designer Alex Marker, Resident Assistant Designer Juliette Demoulin, Assistant Resident Director Jillian Feuerstein, Resident Assistant Producer Jaemin Yu, Cover Art Designer, Jillian Feuerstein.
