POETRY translated into compelling drama? And transformed into a drama featuring just one actor, accompanied by a soundtrack of incidental characters? It sounds challenging, but in The Magnetic Diaries written by prize-winning poet Sarah Leavesley, who writes under the pen name of Sarah James, brought mesmerisingly to life by Vey Straker and directed by Tiffany Hosking, the result was a moving, enlightening and thought-provoking piece of theatre, premiered at this year's Write On Festival at The Courtyard.

Inspiration for the piece was Sarah's own experience of depression, which she re-created as a fictional piece in which each poem unfolds the story, while the accompanying soundtrack fills in a few of the gaps. As the heroine Emma Bailey struggles with depression, the poems, raw, beautiful and lyrical by turns, channel the pain of a relentless, self-critical descent into the abyss of depression. The brevity and brutality of some of the text served to illuminate the realities of a condition that affects so many better than any number of well-meaning documentaries.

In the hands of a less talented actor, this might not have been the case, but Vey Straker caught the tone and mood perfectly to create an entirely credible Emma.