Lynn Benfield, the downtrodden PA to Steve Coogan’s unbearable broadcaster Alan Partridge, doesn’t always get the recognition she deserves. Most people only know Lynn by her first name. On TV, she is always by Alan’s side, quietly tolerating his egocentric behaviour. The 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 feelings: disgust, bewilderment, discomfort. Horton, a big Partridge fan, always felt an affinity with Lynn and loved these expressions. “You get moments like there’s something in her waiting to burst out. But she’s so controlled, she never lets it out,” Horton says. “I identify with that enormously, that sort of masking and being afraid to be silly.” She and a friend would pull their best “Lynn faces” to greet each other, and in her 20s she even started a photography project to capture different interpretations of the Lynn face on camera.
