MY LIFE HAS STOOD by Edie Campbell
Source: The Scotsman

Critic's choice:
MY LIFE HAS STOOD, the journey of a portrayal: Edie Campbell tells the story of her quest for the real Emily Dickinson in this original new play.  Touching, yet unsentimental, this production follows Campbell's own life progressing as she discovers the real life of Dickinson.
 
REVIEW:
Four Stars (out of five)

This strikingly original and carefully woven theatre piece is playwright-performer, Edie Campbell's account of her search for material about the 19th century New England poet, Emily Dickinson.  As parts of the refreshing and genuine story of Campbell's own life are presented, the real Dickinson also unfolds.  By the end, Dickinson is in the ascendant, Campbell having turned wholly into Emily by donning the white costume we are told Dickinson always wore from the time her father died.
 
This sounds a bit Jekyll and Hyde, but it's not - it's consummate and touching.  The strapline on the programme, "A one-woman play about the process of writing, acting and getting into Emily Dickinson's dress", does not give any idea of how expertly Campbell turns a reclusive spinster from a bygone day into the strong-minded philosopher, rugged individualist and delicious ironist that she clearly was.

The search that Campbell made was for "the real Emily, the unidiluted Emily, our Emily", and for a means of being Dickinson' mouthpiece "without getting in her way".

Theatre verterans should enjoy Campbell's description of how she was repeatedly told, on both sides of the Atlantic, "Yes, but you haven't got a play."  My Life Has Stood is a production of rare integrity, neither puffing up nor romanticising a literary figure, that impresarios and academics might have thought they owned.

-    Bonny Lee (for the Scotsman)