Lynn Benfield, the downtrodden PA to Steve Coogan’s insufferable newsreader Alan Partridge, doesn’t always get the recognition she deserves. Most people know Lynn by her first name only. On TV, she’s always there for Alan, silently tolerating his selfish ways. Plymouth-based playwright Laura Horton’s new show Lynn Faces finally puts her centre stage.
While Lynn rarely voices dissent, her face betrays her true emotions: disgust, surprise, discomfort. Horton, a huge Partridge fan, has always felt an affinity for Lynn and loved her expressions. “There are moments when you feel like there’s something inside her that’s just waiting to explode. But she’s so controlled, it never comes out,” Horton says. “I identify with that a lot, that kind of masking and fear of being stupid.” She and a friend would draw their best “Lynn faces” to greet each other, and in her 20s, she even began a photography project to capture different interpretations of Lynn’s face on camera.
In Horton’s play, the main character, Leah, decides to start a punk band before her 40th birthday and uses Lynn as her muse. The story unfolds in real time during the band’s first gig. As the friends chat and rehearse together, Leah reveals more about a relationship she’s recently escaped from. Her friends have always thought this partner was attractive, but the details that emerge paint a darker picture.
The story is apparently inspired by Horton’s own experiences. Years ago, she got into a conversation with feminist punk legend Viv Albertine after watching the Slits frontwoman on a panel. When Horton shared a few details about her then-partner,[Albertine] “He was like, ‘This doesn’t sound good, you should read my book, it’s about me getting out of an abusive relationship.'”
Horton was confused. “He was so impressive to me, so charismatic, and I admired him.” But a pattern emerged, she says. “I knew I felt bad, I knew I was unhappy. But I couldn’t see what it was.”
Coercive and controlling behavior only became a crime in 2015. While the term “gaslighting” has become part of our lexicon, the reality of these relationships can be murkier. For Horton, the transition from a dazzling romance with a magnetic man to a fear of his sudden aggression, a state of self-doubt that shattered her self-confidence, came gradually. “When I got out of that relationship, I felt worthless,” she says. “It took me years and years to fully understand… I’m still discovering.”
I want to look at how narcissists affect people. How can you find hope and joy after narcissists?
The musical element of the play was inspired by another moment in Horton’s life, when, while grieving a breakup, she decided to form the Felicity Montagu Band, named after the actor who played Lynn. Nerves scuttled the project (“I always dreamed of being a drummer but I was never able to do it because I was too shy”). But the idea stuck. For Horton and her character, Leah, forming a band was a relief: “It gives her some of her strength back.”
While Horton wants to highlight what coercive control can look like, “because I think it’s important for people to understand that,” she hopes the tone of the play is empowering. “It’s about how you find hope after abuse. I’m not interested in highlighting a strong person and their psychology. I want to look at how people are affected by narcissists. How do you find resilience, hope, and joy after being in a relationship like that?”
The play balances heavier themes with comedy. The group will be dressed partly in Lynn, partly in punk. Horton scours charity shops for the perfect outfits, mixing typical Lynn cardigans and blouses with fishnets and jeans. Horton says their songs are “really bad.” “One of them just screams ‘Fat cow’ [a classic Lynn quote]. None of them can play an instrument. It leans towards weird, embarrassing, British humor.”
Horton will make his acting debut as a “grumpy drummer” who answers an ad and coyly reveals his toxic relationship with a woman. Horton was inspired by the memoir of Carmen Maria Machado, who recounted the slow escalation of her ex-girlfriend’s abuse and the situation Horton found himself in. “I had to report something a woman did to me and I wasn’t taken seriously. I found that very interesting.”
I loved writing, but I didn’t have the confidence to do it.
Getting on stage is a challenge Horton has set himself. “I was very shy and quiet at primary school. If you’re not outgoing, people don’t see your worth.” Shyness also hindered Horton’s writing aspirations. “I had a little plastic theatre and I used to put on plays for my mum and dad. So I loved writing. But I didn’t have the confidence to do it.” He tried creative writing at university but couldn’t see a route into the industry, so instead he found a job as a steward at Plymouth Theatre Royal back home. Throughout his childhood, the town was viewed with “snobbery”; its cultural scene was small, in parts deprived and run-down. Although more funding and support is needed, Horton says, “the underground is bubbling with music, poetry and theatre. It’s a city that doesn’t celebrate its worth, but it should.”
She volunteers at local charity Millfields Inspired, which teaches children about different jobs. Horton helped the children write monologues, then recorded actors reading them. As she played them back, she says: “You could see the joy of ‘I wrote that!’ Some people don’t think they can do anything creative. It’s important to show children what they can do.”
Relating to: Breathtaking review – a clothes hoarder starts dating a minimalist
That led her to the theatre’s marketing team, and from there she became a publicist working on London’s cultural scene. But still, “I would look at the writers and think: I want to do this.”
By her mid-30s, she had taken a playwriting course and was secretly writing. It was during the pandemic that she finally got serious. In a full-circle moment, she produced three short plays for her former employer, Plymouth Theatre Royal, in 2021 – one of which was Breathless, a semi-autobiographical show about a woman struggling with hoarding disorder. Back in Plymouth, Horton was forced to confront the fact that she was obsessively collecting clothes.
After years working in public relations, she carefully considered how much of herself she would bring to the game and its promotion. “They say write from the creator, not the creator. With Breathless, I didn’t feel like I was putting myself in a vulnerable position,” she says. “I wanted to take the shame out of hoarding. A lot of people were like, I’m hoarding and I don’t know it. So it was the right thing to do. But it was very intense.”
After Richard Gadd’s Baby Reindeer, with its alleged pervert identified and now suing Netflix, Horton thought more carefully about weaving her experiences into Lynn Faces. “You have to be able to tell your own story,” she says. “To figure out: Am I making other people uncomfortable?” She’s also conscious of the personal cost of rehashing traumatic memories: “I’ve seen people have breakdowns in Edinburgh.”
Horton has taken Breathless to the Edinburgh fringe in 2022. It won the Scotsman’s fringe first and BBC Popcorn awards, and has earned Horton an agent and a tour. “I love Edinburgh but it’s both sides,” Horton says. While there is opportunity, it’s hard to experiment when there’s so much money involved. “I’ve worked as a PR person on projects and you’d know their parents would give them $30,000 to take their play to Edinburgh. People shouldn’t be vilified for that but the problem is that it doesn’t take away any of the mystery,” he says. “People feel useless when they can’t get their act together… I don’t come from a rich family. I can’t ruin myself financially.”
However, she left public relations at the end of last year and, by chance, became an artistic consultant at the Barbican theatre in Plymouth. “Sometimes you have to jump into the black hole and think: something’s going to get me,” she says. Despite not having the connections to grease her way into the theatre, Horton feels “really lucky” to have witnessed her mother’s struggle to succeed as a writer. Babs Horton’s first novel was published when she was 50. “She was a working-class Welsh woman. She was headstrong, she was working in a psychiatric unit and writing at the same time. It was inspiring to watch.”
Relating to: I always bought too many clothes but my life was ruined by hoarding
This year, at the age of 70, Babs is doing her first Edinburgh show, In the Lady Garden. Her mother’s presence in Edinburgh is what made Horton decide to take Lynn Faces there this year. “It’s quite something special.”
Like with Breathless, for which Horton made a companion podcast to spread knowledge of hoarding disorder beyond theater, Lynn hopes to raise awareness about coercive control beyond Faces. Witnessing friends break free from their own controlling relationships has underscored the power of knowledge. “Anyone who’s been in a situation like me can feel seen and hopeful,” she says. “This stays with you, but you can heal.”
Lynn Faces in New Diorama theatre, London, July 28, then Summerhall as part ofEdinburgh, 1-26 August: tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/lynn-faces