@ Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, until Sat 18 Jul 2015
When Edward Bond wrote his play Saved 50 years ago, it was a sensation. It helped bring an end to theatre censorship in Britain and its depiction of baby killing (in the perspective of the Mary Bell case and the Moors Murders) was as shocking as it was prescient. All these years later, when child abuse is common currency and every news bulletin is full of abductions or murders, Saved looks dated and is never revived.
The Lyceum Youth Theatre’s production of Bond’s The Children opens with a child murder (the victim is a child-sized puppet but the implication is clear). Jo loves and hates the wretched symbol of childhood and when she returns home, her vodka-swilling mother nags her about washing her hands before suggesting that her daughter go and set fire to a flat in a nearby estate. Despite Jo’s reluctance to eat her dinner or clean up, her disobedience seems to disappear and off she goes to start her career as a freelance firestarter. Then there is a sudden jump cut to Jo on the run with a gang of mates in a ragged landscape of clichéd dystopia. Did I detect the hand of a dreaded “workshopped” collaboration?
The acting from the cast was generally fine – though sometimes self-consciously shouty. The standout was Caitlin Mitchard as Jo, the believably troubled teenager. The rest of the cast grappled with en masse entrances and exits stage left and right. But the terse, telegramatic delivery was so at odds with the way real young people talk (staccato, engaging, elaborately inventive, funny, scatological) I truly wondered if we’d entered another, weirder future dimension. Director Christie O’Carroll needs a tighter, more focussed approach. There was little sign of the ensemble playing that could have made this so much more engaging. The Children, like childhood, is nasty, brutal and short.
Of far more interest was Douglas Maxwell’s Mancub from the LYT’s juvenile wing. This was a flawed production too – the scene breaks were punctuated with distracting flashing lights and loud pop music – but had huge energy and thought-provoking subject matter. A talented cast – notably Tom Borley and Alex Cormack – made the enterprise something like Skins for 10-year-olds. Can young Paul (the excellent Alexander Levi) really transmogrify into animals (a rat, a rhino) or is it just in his imagination? It may be a coping mechanism as he navigates the onset of adolescence with all its confusion and growing pains. His inner thoughts are voiced by a female Greek chorus on mics. All the usual suspects are here: nagging parents, school bullies, demanding Goth girlfriends, overenthusiastic sports coaches.
Wrangling a large cast like this can be daunting for a director. It was done well here (by Xana Marwick) although it did all rather go on too long. At times the cast was having a better time than the audience (mums and dads excepted).