THE CRACKS IN MY SKIN. To 1 March.
Manchester.
THE CRACKS IN MY SKIN
by Phil Porter.
Royal Exchange Studio To 1 March 2008.
Mon-Fri 7.30pm at 8pnm Mat Thu 2.30pm & Sat 4pm
Runs 2hr 40min One interval.
TICKETS: 016 833 9833.
www.royalexchange.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 16 February.
Whatever the shortcomings, this substantial play soon holds the attention, and has an outstanding performance.
This is a rare mixture of romantic fantasy and unromantic realism. Two troubled 16-year old school leavers, their former teacher Josefa, who’s facing a divorce and can’t have the child she desperately wants, and the Black lad’s White grandfather, gradually form a substitute family throughout the first act.
Whether he intended it or not, playwright Phil Porter’s focus is increasingly on the near-feral Janie, who’s been living in a tent, then squats at Josefa’s while she’s in hospital (young Linden’s repainting the house a neutral white as an extension of his Community Service Order). Desperately needing security, Janie virtually wills this new ‘family’ into being.
The second half sees everything fall apart. And when the fragile structure breaks down it’s the teenagers, unsurprisingly, who fall apart.
Cracks appear in skins throughout: Josefa’s surgery, a stabbing, Janie’s desire to be in someone else’s skin. Matti Houghton doesn’t look sixteen, but every expression and movement vividly catches the age’s wild discontent: the eagerness, the conviction that doing what she wants will make things OK, and the angry nihilism when everything goes wrong.
Janie’s the one who sets-up the paddling-pool where the substitute family stand briefly united; and who fulfils school-bully Inger’s accusations when her new life breaks apart. None of the others are so completely realised in the writing, though Anna Lauren makes Inger viciously real.
But Alun, the Christian doctor who surely breaches medical ethics by taking up with Josefa, is a playwright’s device who never moves beyond the bland, Nick Bagnall’s old Roper stays largely in the background, and while Tunji Kasim is intriguing as Linden, this mild-mannered lad is hard to see as an ace shoplifter. There’s more needs exploring than either the script or Chris Meads’ production shows.
Claire Cox capably shows enough of Josefa to suggest there’s more to this calm-mannered woman’s emotional life than Porter develops. He mixes reality and fantasy well; as in the ‘Dragon Room’ of Josefa’s house (named for suspended mobiles). There’s magic in the play, but the garden where everything’s not lovely, with its gravely heart-shape, has its rambling, overgrown areas too.
Janie: Matti Houghton.
Josefa: Claire Cox.
Linden: Tunji Kasim.
Roper: Col Farrell.
Alun: Nick Bagnall.
Inger: Anna Lauren.
Director: Chris Meads.
Designer: Hannah Clark.
Lighting: Kay Harding.
Sound: Steve Brown.
Dialects: Mark Langley.
Fights: Kate Waters.
2008-02-18 11:27:16