His performance of the Cowardly Lion is really, really good, and and got lots of laughs from the audience. With songs and laughter a-plenty, The Wizard of Oz is definitely an very good play, and I would highly reccommend it to most people, but it is Stephen’s performance of the Lion that really makes this play a Rrrrrrrrrrroaring Success! So wrote Kevin Chandler, theater critic for Shanklin St. Mary’s Comprehensive School’s Termly Times student newspaper of Stephen’s 1986 performance. The Sandown and Shanklin Advertiser concurred, calling him “a star in the making, just like his namesake, the American film star Steve McQueen!” It was, everyone agreed, a fantastic performance; he was, in Kevin’s evocative phrase, “really, really good.” At the last-night party, Beverley Slater, his Dorothy, and generally considered by pundits to be way out of his league, led him behind the humanities huts, and as he stood there, shivering in the December night, one hand placed gingerly in Beverley’s bolero, head spinning with applause and lust and contraband cider, his mind was made up.
