Photo by Jenni Douglas

Showing @ Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh until Sat 16 Mar (now finished)

Begun in 1997, the National Theatre Connections festival has been running annually since 2003. Taken from the ten plays on this year’s roster, Christie O’Carroll puts on Lucinda Coxon’s script with the Lyceum Youth Theatre. The dialogue is a collection of non-consecutive remarks delivered from the perspective of a teenager’s parent. Apart from the occasional head turn, or disapproving glare and one electrical moment that divides the stage, the eleven strong cast don’t particularly interact with each other. Instead they sit, scattered across the stage on brightly patterned boxes, sometimes standing to amble around only to find another cuboid perch from which to continue their discourse.

The concept of a group of adolescents speaking the imagined trepidations of parental angst presents an interesting role reversal. Some of the cast are surely recently guilty of a number of the scripted accusation (staying out too late, not calling home) but they all deliver their lines with the conviction of a paranoid procreator. The text is a hotchpotch of tender parenting, comic frustrations and dark, hidden truths, making the production as well rounded as an upbringing should be. Varied approaches to parenting suggest that, despite the many voiced worries, there are no right or wrong answers (accepting extreme behaviour) to raising a child.

The simple, unobtrusive direction allows the words to take the limelight and furthers the intimate atmosphere of a group of worried mothers and fathers venting their pent up feelings. The conversational comments of the characters, remembering how they were raised and the idiosyncrasies of their own parents brings a connection between the states of child, parent and grandparent. Combined with the opening and closing school scene, this acts to transcend the generational differences between the ages and instead unites them in a wonderfully daunting train of learning and development. O’Carroll’s entertaining and pensive production is delivered with the powerful but innocent charm of it’s youthful cast.

Follow Callum on Twitter @CWMadge