STORM. To 27 April.
Manchester
STORM
by Lemn Sissay
Contact Theatre To 27 April 2002
Mon-Sat 8pm
Runs 1hr 25min No interval
TICKETS 0161 274 0600
Review Timothy Ramsden 19 April
A play that doesn't have all the answers but shows how some young people come to formulate their questions about society.In a culture-palace coup Contact Theatre Company has remodelled its home-base outside and in. Contact's always aimed at the youth market; now it's transformed physically into the likes of the nightspots where Tribe Teenage hangs about and chills out. In a busy schedule of performance and participation, along comes this new play by a young poet.
It's set in a care home for children, which as its residents Danny and Billy say, is no place for children. As for care, the only adults we meet, distanced by their formal names and choric anonymity, spend most of their time offering each other tea and distributing disciplinary points among the youngsters. In this, they are actively encouraged by the provocative Billy.
Where would these young people rather be? Danny dreams of foster-parents' return, Billy of the wide open road. There is a wide open road upstage, contrasting the protective circle of the Home in Scott Sellers' intriguing but intrusive set - scenery inappropriately conceals characters at times. Blown around in the street (the two lads cling to the upper reaches of a telegraph pole in the windswept city storm), pushed around in the home, their only refuge is bed. Three bedsteads perch perilously mid-air, offering fragile privacy. The third's for Elaine, who hides under a sheet, her speech internalised, disembodied through amplification.
Authority peers down from a screen where psycho-experts might not ask these three to be trees, but certainly question them about what kind of tree they each might be. The camera moves in and out on the questioners' lips, which at first mouth comfortable expertise, until images and voices overlap, blur and start gavotting in the crazy babble-dance they must seem to their young clients.
It's not always easy to focus – the adults on stage are busy with their teapot or cups, plates and cutlery fall off the crazily-angled tables while important poetic things are being said by the young people. More simplicity, less Complicite would sometimes have helped. Yet the piece builds forcefully to show the institutional Big Brotherdom these young people see society heaping down on them.
Danny: Danny J. Burns
Mrs Jones: Juliet Ellis
Billy: Curtis Flowers
Mrs Spot: Amanda Hadingue
Elaine: Carla Henry
Storm poem: Pranav Aggawal, Nadia Aljanbi, Clare Barton, Domonic Berry, Sean Cernow, Tuan Dodge, Georgina Facey, Paula Hateley, Jonathan Henry, Derry Holding, Nigel Hunt, Emma Johnston, Opinder Kaur, Lauren Lewis, Pauline Lloyd, Avaes Mohammed, Alex Platt, Joel Stephens, Mel Tyers, Simmy Wilson. Sunny Wray
Psychologist Video: Glenn Cunningham, Debbie Howard, Rina Mahoney, Leigh Symmonds, Noel Williams
Director: John E. McGrath
Designer: Scott Sellers
Lighting: David Martin
Movement: Benji Reid
Composer: Arun Ghosh
Video: Videograph, with thanks to Bob Robinson
2002-04-22 15:40:21