Cradle Me

Published Monday 6 October 2008 at 12:55 by Matt Trueman

After a brief foray into the city with his last play Turf, Simon Vinnicombe has retreated to the suburbs for Cradle Me, circling the voguish prey of a bourgeois family in freefall behind a well-groomed exterior.

Following the death of her teenage son, Marion (Sharon Maughan) succumbs to an affair with his reclusive best friend Daniel (Luke Treadaway). As her husband seeks solace in champagne, Marion finds it in her admiration of youth - the pert flesh, the posters splashed on walls and the gentle bounce of reggae. In turn, Daniel becomes ill-fitting adult, eventually confronted at a dinner party cum crisis summit.

Vinnicombe’s script is too easy in the watching, lacking a real sting in the tail. Solid without sparkling, it captures the wandering inanity of youthful conversation with more subtlety than the clunky life-lectures of his adult characters.

Treadaway gives a wonderfully animalistic performance, mixing squirming uncertainty with chest-puffed confidence. The weathered Paul Herzberg is perfect as the father, swinging and swigging forlornly, while Sarah Bedi adds humour and sensibility through her muddled adolescent.

Casting us as prying neighbours in traverse, director Duncan Macmillan finds a voyeuristic responsibility, ensnaring his audience through simple sexuality and the watchable crumble of a family already in despair.

Though well-observed and engaging, Cradle Me never shatters familiar territory - it’s That Face with blemishes instead of scars.