The Stage

Begin/End

Published Monday 8 February 2010 at 11:50 by Susan Elkin

Lili (Amy Costello) and Yaz (Rachel McKenzie) are teenagers growing up in the Limehouse area of east London, where Half Moon Theatre is based. David Lane’s powerful, moving story of their friendship - actually an unrequited love affair - is unravelled retrospectively, looking back over two years with the narrative presented from Lili’s anguished point of view.

A scene from Begin/End at Half Moon Young People's Theatre Photo: Patrick Baldwin

Lane gives Lili many lyrically articulate lines as she tries to understand and express the physicality of her longing to be close to Yaz in a way that the other girl, troubled, insouciant, half repelled by and half drawn to Lili, doesn’t want. And the difference between them is symbolised by Lili’s intensive swimming training and Yaz’s ambitious but introverted dancing.

Both actors are very strong and they work impeccably together. Costello finds real poignancy in Lili’s vulnerability and jealousy and McKenzie brings just the right capricious brittleness and dismissive cruelty to her character who has a violent home life, sees boyfriends and heterosexual sex as normal and dreams of dance training in New York. The scenes on the beach at Brighton and in the train going ‘up west’ are nicely managed and there’s a lot of humour - for which Lane has a fine ear - in the episode when the two girls go on a school trip to a museum.

Anna Harding’s versatile filing cabinet set seems unlikely but does the job and I liked Ed Thomas’s atmospheric music and Paul Hithersay’s evocative VJ work. Intended for teenage audiences, this very watchable play addresses some difficult issues with commendable sensitivity.