WILD GIRL, WILD BOY. To 26 March.
Young People
WILD GIRL, WILD BOY
by David Almond
Pop-Up Theatre Company on tour to 26 March 2003
Runs 1hr No interval
Review Timothy Ramsden 16 February at Playhouse MacRobert Centre Stirling
After a self-conscious start, Almond's play develops imaginatively.A sense of loss is about the deepest emotion young people experience. If life never provokes it through daily events, it seems to arise anyway in dreams. David Almond's play, now re-touring two years on follows the experience of Elaine, who has lost her father and fears finding a very different, very unsatisfactory new one, in this play for 8+. It may be over-deliberate in places but it respects the emotions and intelligence of its audience.
Dad is a dream figure in Elaine's memories, happy and full of good-humour: very literally down-to-earth as he tends his allotment. It's his neighbour there who casts on this happiness the kind of gloom David Copperfield experienced with the Murdstones. When this nasty neighbour comes courting the widow, the play hits precisely the fear of misfortune beyond bearing that a child has no way of articulating.
There's a sense of control-loss too in the local gossip apparently disembodied and threatening in the original production, here incarnated in some rapid doubling by the actors, varying their identities by adopting clothes hung out to dry and a variety of props. The instant physicalisations have a roughness, but give fearsome local voices a comic side too.
So it's unsurprising Elaine, in her wild emotions, creates the spirit - and spirited - Wild Boy, who has all her Dad's playfulness and provides her with an escape from diurnal fears and restrictions.
Jane Wolfson's production and the capable performances are sympathetic to the play. At times, in script and staging, implication might have been stronger than spelled-out representation. But the production builds its momentum and overall it's a matter for which to be thankful that, amid exploitative commercial entertainments which go the easy way to make a mark, or merely milk children and parents for merchandising and as advertisers' fodder, there's skilled work of this integrity around.
Cast:
Janet Bamford, Adam Booth, Andy Oliver, Mandy Vernon-Smith
Director: Jane Wolfson
Designer: Will Hargreaves
Musical Directors: James Hesford, Mark Pearson
2003-02-26 00:42:53