LOOKING FOR JJ. Tol 10 March.

Tour.

LOOKING FOR JJ
by Anne Cassidy adapted by Marcus Romer.

Pilot Theatre Tour to 10 Maarch 2008.
Runs: 1hr 35imin no interval.
Review: Alan Geary 28 February 2008.

The murder of a child – by a child. It’s fascinating, absorbing and harrowing.
Anne Cassidy’s novel about the murder of a child - by a child - makes fascinating and absorbing theatre.

Additional to its central subject, the play is concerned with the media and the contemporary cult of communal “grief” masquerading as proper grief. The production is quintessential Pilot Theatre with its trademark blending of electronic media and back-projected film with stage acting, and we go back and forth in time as the events leading up to the crime, the killing itself, and its consequences are examined in detail.

Presumably the whole thing is suggested by the Mary Bell case from the sixties and the subsequent attempts by the red-tops to discover Bell’s post-custody whereabouts.

The central character, Kate, brilliantly played by Christina Baily, narrates the story as it happens and gives us sometimes amusing but usually harrowing interior monologues. What with the way she’s dragged up by her despicable good-time-girl/model/prostitute mother (Melanie Ash), we’re forced to sympathise with and feel pity for Kate.

This is adult theatre, unsuitable, you’d have thought, for some of the children present in the audience on reviewing night.

Jill/Carol/Sara: Melanie Ash.
Kate/Alice/JJ: Christina Baily.
Lucy/Sophie: Rochelle Gadd.
Frankie/Stevie/Mr Cottis: Davood Ghadami.
Michelle/Lyndsay: Louise Kempton.
Rosie: Suzann McLean.

Director: Marcus Romer.
Designer: Laura McEwen.
Lighting: James Farncombe.

2008-03-02 23:56:58