The Stage

Negative Space

Published Friday 18 September 2009 at 13:50 by Jonathan Lovett

A missing child is one of the most devastating events in the history of a family. Not knowing if they’re dead or alive induces a form of paralysis that corrodes its sanity as they wait forever for some kind of closure.

Set in the same year as the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, Sternberg and Wayne’s bold attempt to portray the grief of another distraught family is thoughtful and provocative, even if it ultimately fails to mine too deeply the pits of emotion such a tragedy provokes.

On an appropriately grim fairy tale of a set - doll’s house, twisted papier-mache, black as soot dresses - plays out the story of forever 11-year-old Callie (April Pearson), last seen standing outside her music teacher’s house, waiting for a lift home.

Commemorating the tenth anniversary of her disappearance, her sister, Samantha (Hannah Tointon), boyfriend (Jamie Harding) and mother and father (Suzan Sylvester and Russell Floyd) imagine conversations with her self as then, her self as a young woman now, or we travel back to the time of Blair’s victory and Diana’s death to witness the build-up to that fateful day.

Interesting aspects are thrown up along the way - the anger Samantha feels at being forever eclipsed by the “negative space” of her departed sister, the fantasies and fetishism surrounding such a subject - and it’s an inspired decision to have, in effect, two Callies (well played by the luminous Pearson) to poignantly illustrate what’s been lost.