THE TRESTLE AT POPE LICK CREEK. To 19 February.
Manchester
THE TRESTLE AT POPE LICK CREEK
by Naomi Wallace
Royal Exchange Studio To 19 February 2005
Runs 2hr 15min One interval
TICKETS: 0161 833 9833
box.office@royalexchange.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 5 February
An image of a society that loses none of its multiple resonances by being vivid and precise.This is essentially the production (partly recast) that gave Naomi Wallace's play its first English outing. It was impressive then and remains so now. Like Southwark Playhouse in 2003, the Royal Exchange Studio is an intimate space well-suited to this story of two teenagers in 1930s small-town Depression America.
The action shifts between a shadowy present-day where 15-year old Dalton Chance lies in prison awaiting trial for allegedly killing Pace Cregan, a girl 2 years his senior, and the recent past where Dalton and Pace meet at the Trestle a hundred-foot high wooden bridge, where trains with somewhere to go thunder past the dried-up Creek.
These scenes actually have the most active, present-tense feel. Pace's dare is to wait for the oncoming train's whistle then race across the bridge towards it. There's no space either side. You beat the train or as already happened to another local youth you're dead.
From this Naomi Wallace builds, in fragments, a fine picture of the teenagers' relationship. And while the game they plan gives them a purpose, the adults waste away. The local gaoler gets by with animal impressions; Dalton's dad makes shadow animals on the curtain as he sinks into redundancy. Only Dalton's mother eventually discovers some purpose in joining a workers' occupation of the local glass factory.
Raz Shaw's production picks out the mood changes between the generations, using the struts of Jaime Todd's set (with its suggestions of the towering trestles) to confine or stretch the characters Hannah Storey uses the higher levels to create the adventurousness that characterises Pace.
Stephen Wight gives Dalton a wonder that stands in for a 15-year old's inexperience. He asks the questions that would occur to anyone who doesn't share his friend's ultimate confidence. His deliberate pacing, guarding as a secret the truth about his meetings with Pace, defines the boy.
David Holmes' lighting and Andrew Green's score sustain the atmosphere as Shaw's expert production moves between time-zones. It all adds up to a strongly atmospheric, and vividly concrete, picture of youthful energy and uncertainties set against the larger anxieties of isolated, poverty-ridden lives.
Dalton Chance: Stephen Wight
Pace Cregan: Hannah Storey
Chas Weaver: Terence Frisch
Gin Chance: DeNica Fairman
Dray Chance: Julian Protheroe
Director: Raz Shaw
Designer: Jaime Todd
Lighting: David Holmes
Sound: Mike Winship
Composer: Andrew Green
Dialect coach: Neil Swain
Fight director: Lewis Penfold
2005-02-07 22:49:21