THE AGE OF CONSENT by Peter Morris. Bush Theatre to 9 February.

London

THE AGE OF CONSENT
by Peter Morris

Bush Theatre To 9 February 2002
Runs 1hr 30min No interval

TICKETS 020 7610 4224
Review Timothy Ramsden 21 January.

Implication is more powerful than explicit confrontation in this twin-monologue play.The age of consent isn't just part of a person's chronology; it's the spirit of our times. 'We're living in an age of consent,' according to Desmond Varady, the unseen director of TV adverts. who happens along as answer to ambitious single mother Stephanie's dreams.

Stephanie's dreaming for six year old Raquel, the daughter monster she's creating by turning her girl into an amalgam of 'Talent, Teeth and Tits' to be pushed through auditions from panto to Les Miz.

Her monologues are intercut with Timmy's. He's a teenage child-murderer about to be set loose as his sentence ends. Educated, we're told, with more individual attention than you'd get at Eton, he remains explosively inarticulate about his feelings and motives, aware of the celebrity he'll lose when he's on the streets with a new identity.

Despite Ben Silverstone's forceful performance - the loose and awkward hands which have a grip on nothing, the vocal system that struggles to keep up with the feelings Timmy's racing to express - his monologues become less convincing as they wear on, direct experience being increasingly tainted with authorial editorialising.

Stephanie, a woman from Basingstoke and the Mum from hell, fares better because there's more implication for Parkinson to work with. Stephanie's initial smile, bright and confident, becomes increasingly a paste-on over worry and doubt. She's born to be pushy, becoming her daughter's agent, but also to push herself blind into trouble ahead. Eventually, when up-market clothes and their implied lifestyle swathe her in the new-found bliss of affluence, she leaves us with a broad smile and the chilling image of Desmond taking her little Raquel off for a private picnic.

Morris can be too deliberate; the attempt to comment on theatre in Timmy's awareness of an audience is an over-explicit dramatic device. But, helped by the performances in Edward Dick's unfussy production, he makes fair headway in showing, through his two self-absorbed characters, a rancid side of a celebrity-soaked society

Stephanie: Katherine Parkinson
Timmy: Ben Silverstone

Director: Edward Dick
Designer: Mike Britton
Lighting: Matt Kirby
Music: Theo Holloway

2002-01-22 09:21:49