MY CHILD. To 2 June.

London

MY CHILD
by Mike Bartlett

Royal Court (Jerwood Theatre Downstairs) To 2 June 2007
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat 3.30pm also 22, 24, 29, 31 May 9.15pm
BSL Signed 30 May
Runs 40min No interval

TICKETS: 0210 7565 5000
www.royalcourttheatre.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 19 May

Brief, vigorous – but leaving characters unexplored.
Depending how it’s said, the title of Mike Bartlett’s new play is a sign of affection or an insistence. Here it’s the latter: my child. Separated parents dispute their son in an ever-changing world summed up by the tube-station environment director Sacha Wares and designer Miriam Buether have sculpted out of the Royal Court’s stalls, edged by the urban, anonymous lifestyle represented in Starbucks tables and coffee-holders.

It’s a tiny, enclosed space, confining the characters like occupants of an underground train compartment, wandering the carriage, watched by an audience sitting and standing around. Yet they repeatedly speak to people remote from them, as if with inbuilt ‘phones. Characters often emerge from the audience. Action ranges around Britain.

The casting’s profligate, several characters contributing only a few lines, life going on around the vertiginous tug-of-love that harms the child, who starts alone playing with an electric model-car. Later his arm goes black, as he sees violence, verbal and physical, all around.

Every adult’s been a child; what they were taught by adults is part of their identity. This Father, seeing family relationships used to manipulate, and the power of money, rejects his mother’s humane values when it’s literally thumped into him that muscle, physical and financial, rules events.

This is the 21st-century, expressed in 21st–century language (a new name for swearing). Only grandmother protests, until she starts watching television. Father’s been called a multiple wanker before he grows desperate, kidnapping his own son, increasing the boy’s hatred, but bringing subsequent, surprising sympathy. The paternity proved in DNA tests shows in nature.

Yet it’s hardly new to learn the world’s a brutal place, and the treatment that leaves the Father decrying his own mother’s gentler messages seems mainly a protest of the moment. Bartlett’s brevity provides stimulating snapshots, but leaves the characters clear-cut surfaces rather than explored beings. The result works better theatrically than dramatically.

‘Happiness Guaranteed’ says one of the adverts glaring above the action. Buether’s set is star of the show, well though it’s acted – fitting in a piece where what you see is most of what you get.

Father: Richard Albrecht
Child: Adam Arnold
Mother: Jan Chappell
Karl: Adam James
Older Woman: Sara Kestelman
Another Man: James Livingstone
Man: Ben Miles
Another Woman: Antoinette Tagoe
Young Woman: Jodie Taibi
Other Woman: Romy Tennant
Woman: Lia Williams

Director: Sacha Wares
Designer: Miriam Buether
Lighting: Johanna Town
Sound: Ian Dickinson
Choreographer: Juha Marsalo
Dialect coach: Jan Hayden Rowles
Company voice work: Patsy Rodenburg
Assistant director: Amy Hodge

2007-05-21 01:15:27