With infants seen being buried alive, their skeletons later exhumed and a public hanging taking place at the climax of Act I, it may be odd to find Coram Boy occupying the National’s main house Christmas slot and billed as continuing the National’s productions for young people that have included His Dark Materials, Peter Pan and The Wind in the Willows.
But though the National may be entering nightmarish notes of terror for the more impressionable of that constituency, it is also not patronising them, or its wider adult audience. This is the best kind of storytelling theatre - one that confronts a real world of imagination and horror and crafts a genuinely compelling drama out of it.
Based on Jamila Gavin’s Whitbread Children’s Book Award winning novel that was inspired by the true story of Thomas Coram - a tireless campaigner, who established the first Foundling Hospital to look after abandoned babies in 1739 - it paints a detailed social canvas of the financial and physical exploitation of children and the trade in child labour of 18th century Britain.
Dickensian in its breadth and reach, it follows the story of two kids who end up at the hospital - one, saved from a slave ship, the other an abandoned illegitimate son of the heir to an estate.
Beautifully adapted by Helen Admundson, it acquires a particular theatricality in debuting Olivier director Melly Still’s epic production that floods the stage with actors, musicians and especially the music of Handel that provides a glorious scoring throughout. The wonderful Anna Madeley reveals a thrillingly pure singing voice to complement her appropriately boyish performance as the young Alexander Ashbrook.
Production information can change over the run of the show.
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