Veron­ica Lake was a film star in the 1940s. She was a tiny, sexy blonde. Her hair was styled to fall art­fully over her face con­ceal­ing one eye. She lived her life in a sim­il­ar man­ner – chan­ging her story to suit the mood she was in at the time. Drown­ing in Veron­ica Lake is a styl­ised telling of her story.

Alex Ellis solos in this show. She is con­fined to one place  by her cos­tume. It is a fit­ted white dress that spreads around her, filling up the stage. Her phys­ic­al move­ments are restric­ted to bend­ing and pos­ing. This is bal­anced by her excel­lent voice work. Ellis has a won­der­ful old Hol­ly­wood accent which subtly changes as the char­ac­ter slips into drunk­en­ness. She is helped by the light­ing design which helps her embody dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters. (Play­wright Phil Ormsby oper­ates the lights as well.)

It’s an intriguing piece about the cost (not the price) of celebrity.