YOUNG EUROPE. To 19 June.

Young People

YOUNG EUROPE

Kadouma's Island
by Joel Jouanneau and Marie-Claire Le Pavec translated by Alan Pollock
55 min No interval

Little Angels
by Marco Baliani translated by Teresa Ariosto
Runs 1hr 5min No interval

Sweetpeter
by John Retallack and Usifu Jalloh
Runs 2hr 25min One interval

Company of Angels at Polka Theatre To 19 June 2004
Review: Timothy Ramsden 9 April at Oxford Playhouse

Brave, challenging work that takes young audiences seriously.In three years John Retallack's Company of Angels has become a major force in theatre for young people in Britain. With strong international connections, the work grows from the serious, stylistically adventurous work for young people Retallack developed at Oxford Stage Company.

The Angels are mounting the three pieces collectively forming Young Europe' with Polka Theatre, Wimbledon-based young people's theatre specialists now expanding into work for teens. Ironically, though the plays come from France, Italy and Britain, two are set in tropical zones, while the other has a generalised street location.

Kadouma's Island is aimed youngest, for 5+, and Polka's Annie Wood gives it a suitably delicate, colourful production with her work's usual strong visual imagination. There's a fair background to be absorbed European Lily White is searching a rare butterfly to be found only on this island. Her solo expedition's being paid for by the media who think she's researching the island people. No news of them = no food supplies, and with Kadouma the only native human left, there are problems.

That's enough realism. The situation sparks imaginative associations: the butterfly becomes the ultimately desirable thing, always wanted, never to be found in an imperfect life.

And hunger leads to cannibalism each drawing lots and one going in the cooking-pot. It's here the story skirts both the terrifying and the racially stereotyping, countered by the sympathetic performances which suggest a shared dilemma, one where the natural world is called upon for help. Wood's light-mannered, colourful production is expertly played throughout.

I suspect the Italian play Little Angels suffered from a thin audience in a formal setting. It's a conversation piece between two immigrants who might be in a new land, or even out of this world - the characters are told they might find work by waiting under the last lamp-post, a real yet unreal-sounding setting. Teresa Ariosto's version gives it a 1960s London setting for John Retallack's British premiere. This has specific associations, though unlikely to be a familiar iconography for its intended 8+ audiences.

The piece was originally developed through improvisation and it seems to need a freer-flowing relationship between performers and watchers for its humour to emerge. Without this, the constant veering between possibilities suggested a piece with nowhere to go. This is a possible definition of improvised drama, I know, but with a larger audience and closer relationship with the stage there's likely to be more responsiveness off which the actors can play.

Sweetpeter for 12+ is Retallack's own contribution as writer, a full length play that uses the device Virginia Woolf created in Orlando of a character whose life stretches across centuries, focusing change in an individual's experience. With a life expectancy between Lucie Cabrol (3 lives) and a cat (9), Sweetpeter is given 7 existences and has used up 6. The first act shows his experience as a Black African facing a life of slavery (life 1 ends when his father kills him as a baby rather than have him face such an existence), through an idealised freed society and the new encroachment of Europeans bringing second class social status based on skin colour.

If that act's history, the second's modern politics, and so probably needs more sophisticated awareness of things they don't teach much in schools. With clear reference to Sierra Leone, with rebel forces amputating victims' hands, Sweetpeter lives through the oppressions of modern African existence at its least impressive.

Retallack's clearly unafraid to make demands of young audiences. Judging by a workshop for 8+ I attended after Little Angels the piece spoke to some (at least) with clarity and a range of possibilities. Young Europe is no pantomime, no easy holiday watching, but young people's theatre that respects and challenges its audiences. As Company of Angels' wide-ranging season of Arcola readings demonstrates, there's a lot more such work out there, round Europe and beyond.

This healthy combination of Polka bringing Annie Wood's visual, imagistic flair and the Angels (Retallack's command of plot and character) could point to a national company bringing an international young people's repertory to Britain. These productions show the value of taking such audiences seriously through high-quality acting, direction and design.

Kadouma's Island
Lily White: Liza Hayden
Kadouma: Ewart James Walters

Director: Annie Wood
Designer: Keith Baker
Lighting: Ian Scott
Music: Craig Vear
Assistant director: Chris Rolls

Little Angels
Denzel: Leroy Liburd
Ruby: Nina Kristofferson

Director: John Retallack
Designer: Keith Baker
Lighting: Ian Scott
Assistant director: Kitty Winter

Sweetpeter
Mother: Nina Kristofferson
Father: Ewart James Walters
Sweetpeter: Sidney Smith
Molly: Liza Hayden
Gentle: Lee Hart
Chief/The Trader: Leroy Liburd

Director: John Retallack
Designer: Keith Baker
Lighting: Ian Scott
Musical arranger: Usifu Jalloh
Choreographer: Landing Mane
Assistant directors: Chris Rolls, Kitty Winter

2004-05-12 12:28:22