THIS CHILD: Pommerat, touring.

Nottingham/Touring.

THIS CHILD Joel Pommerat.
Lakeside Arts Centre: Tkts 0115 846 7777 www.lakesidearts.org.uk
Touring Details: www.pilot-theatre.com.
Runs: 1h: no interval.
Review: Alan Geary: 21 November 2008.

Could easily have been pretentious twaddle but it’s compelling stuff.
It could easily have been pretentious twaddle, but instead This Child, Pilot Theatre’s second offering at the Nottingham’s Lakeside Arts Centre in a week, is compelling stuff. It’s about the parent/child relationship viewed from different angles.

In ten very short vignettes, one immediately after the other, four versatile performers, Sarah Musk, Anthony Ofoegbu, Caroline Lena Olsson and Oliver Wilson, joined for the last piece by director Suzann McLean, move effortlessly from character to character.

The whole thing, beginning and ending with a woman in pregnancy, appears to take us full-circle.

Perhaps it’s something to do with the fact that this is translated - by Nigel Gearing from the French original by Joel Pommeratt - but the text is sometimes questionable. Occasionally, as in an exchange between a ten-year-old schoolboy and an over-possessive mother, it’s too literate for the character.

Acting, which sometimes almost spills over into dance, is almost always excellent. Musk, who’s outstanding, is particularly moving in the fifth scene, where she’s a young single mother who gives a baby she loves away to an elderly couple. And when Ofoegbu is a disease-racked father who’s lost the respect of his son, it’s almost heart-breaking. He’s also splendid as a middle-class, middle-aged, father taking well-deserved stick from his son, also a father.

Pilot Theatre is coming up with interesting productions these days.

Sarah Musk.
Anthony Ofoegbu.
Caroline Lena Olsson.
Oliver Wilson.

Director: Suzann McLean.

2008-11-24 10:51:20