READING recent reviews of performances and plays seen at this year’s Edinburgh Festival, it would appear that practically every presentation and performance was a smash hit, including Scaffolding. It was therefore a little with the attitude of ‘go on – show me how good you are’ that I arrived at the Bristol Old Vic’s Weston Studio to see Devon-based Documental Theatre’s probe into the challenges facing a single mother raising a dysfunctional handicapped daughter.

It took very few of the 90 minutes this monologue runs to assure me that the Edinburgh reviews were, in this case, well earned. Author Lucy Bell not only explores the personal challenges facing mother and daughter, but also throws a spotlight on the well-intentioned people of Adult Social Care, who, for the best of reasons, believe that they know best what is right for the physically and mentally impaired rising 24-year-old, rather than her loving, self-sacrificing mother.

Sheridan may not have the sharpest of intellects, and may be over-trusting in her dealings with authority, but she has a mother’s instinct as to where her daughters best interests and chance of an improved life lie. Into this mix comes a new vicar, sent to oversee the sale of the church to which Sheridan has given so much of her time and energy, and on which she so heavily relies for support.

With all her earthly props taken away, Sheridan climbs the scaffolding erected around the leaky church spire, the repairs for which she raised so much money, to consult with the boss, God. The exchanges sometimes become quite confrontational when no hint of guidance is forthcoming. Not even any help as to how she can buy the ingredients and make a bomb with which to destroy the church and save it from the hands of commercial philistines.

The monologue is laced with humour, and hidden in deeper crevasses – perhaps not surprisingly with a female author, director, producers, set designer and movement director, are subtle hints of feminism. But it is the human problems and society’s still-blinkered view of mental and physical disability, and decisions as to who are the best people to meet these challenges, that are at the heart of the evening. It is a big ask for a solo performer to open up all these avenues for us, and in doing so creating a completely honest character prepared to lay her soul bare for inspection. Not a big bawling character all of noise and fury, but one with an inner strength, prepared to stand her ground against all odds for the benefit of her loved ones and the community.

You will find those characteristics in the character of 11-year-old Susan Walker in the 1974 film of the children’s classic Swallows and Amazons. They had matured but still had youthful exuberance five years as Izz Huett in Roman Polanski’s Tess, even further as Julia in Nineteen Eighty- Four, and on through a string of TV Soaps and classical theatre. Unlike so many famous child actors who ability fades when they reach adulthood, Suzanna Hamilton has retained that natural ability to bring complete honesty to her portrayals, making her characters into real people to whose lives you can relate.

Scaffolding is by no means the finished article, opening up too many arguments about our relationships with and ability to help those with mental and physical disabilities, then leaving them floating in mid-air, fighting for room among our personal battles with life and death. One thing it does do is make you take a closer look at individual problems and parts of life all too often hidden away in dark corners, because we do not wish to face them.

GRP