This is exciting new writing from Laura Lomas and a new and perhaps risky departure for New Perspectives. It’s much shorter than advertised, running at just over an hour rather than 80 minutes, and it’s almost unremittingly bleak, despite the tenderness with which one character, Meghan, is drawn.
She’s a schoolgirl from a wholly dysfunctional family, linked in a complex web of relationships to the equally dysfunctional family of Jamie, the boy to whom she attaches herself. The play is staged in traverse on a long concrete strip that serves as factory workshop, trackside and riverside. Oil drums and scrap metal make it a stark and hostile place.
It’s a chilling and atmospheric setting but the downside of the staging is that backs are inevitably turned much of the time or the action played out at some distance. This is not generally a problem for Sophie Ellerby (Meghan), who is attitude personified and delivers her quick-fire dialogue so endearingly, or for Karl Haynes, who gives a strong and uncompromising performance as the ex-soldier, Clayton.
But is a handicap for Joe Doherty, who is making his stage debut. He rises to the challenge of playing Jamie but does not project his voice and is barely audible at times, so that missing narrative has to be pieced together afterwards. The story ends in violence and tragedy. We are left with a deep sense of the pity and inevitability of the collision course on which the teenagers, without guidance and support, are set adrift.
Production information can change over the run of the show.
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