Review DNA

DNA
by Dennis Kelly

Into The Woods
http://bit.ly/DNANYT

Once upon a time - even before TLT's jalopy rolled off the conveyor belt - TLT studied Bernard Shaw's St Joan and Will Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream for the - ahem - predecessor of GCSEs.

Now we're reliably informed Dennis ("Matilda") Kelly's 2008 Pinteresque one-act play DNA is on the syllabus. It's a dark piece, a cross between Lord Of The Flies and Animal Farm for the television age with a bit of Shakespearean cruelty thrown in for good measure.

A gang of kids, led by Jo Tate (a convincingly menancing yet complacent Natasha Heliotis), escape regularly into the woods away from school while enigmatic Phil (Joe Pierson) stays aloof sedately munching on a series of branded snacks and drinks.

This time, though, it's a different kind of rendezvous and bonding for the teenagers. The group has lured a vulnerable schoolboy regarded as a tag-along weakling into a dangerous dare and, albeit accidentally, a nasty outcome.

An actor-musician strumming the guitar with vocals, Felix Mackenzie-Barrow as Matt, introduces this  tale with ensemble cast directed by Sean Hollands. The design by Ivan Alexander Todorov veers towards the minimilist with versatile blocks and neon tubes eveloped by smoke and flashlights slicing through the night (lighting Gareth Weaver).

Originally part of the National Theatre's youth theatre scheme, Connections, in 2007, this was the first time we had seen this subtle and supple play about power politics.

Now a set book, there were still gasps from the mainly young audience seeing the play off the page in performance. The production ratchets up the twists, turns and the logic of the ruthlessness and the cornered.

Nevertheless, it struck us, sitting in the stalls, the script's pace might work better in the round than on The Ambassadors' extremely lofty proscenium arch stage. This consideration certainly influences this review, as it made the play feel a little sluggish at times, even if outweighed by some outstanding individual performances. 

Like DNA, the piece's building blocks are split into a double strand - the gang's crime and cover up and, linked across to it, the cool, calculating Phil - Pierson with something of the young Malcolm McDowell about him.

A young man of few words, Phil is the theorist who, at arms length, comes up with the cover-up plan where, nobody else, in theory, should get hurt. 

His existence is also defined by the voluble Leah (Catrin Walker-Booth). She's equally infatuated and frustrated by him, like an eager acolyte student trying in vain to impress a seemingly indifferent tutor with her knowledge.

Charlotte Law's conscience-stricken Becky, led into lying, finds a natural way with melodrama, as does Shiv Jalota as the unexpected returnee to the pack. Daisy Fairclough also fulfills the promise shown in earlier NYT productions this season as the out-of-control underling Cathy who throws the best-laid plans disastrously off course.

As a whole, this is a solid production which could do at times with a slightly sharper focus. Even so, it's an amber light for a strong cast in a chilling, powerful play.

  

Review Pigeon English

Pigeon English
By Stephen Kelman
Adapted by Gbolahan Obisesan

Wild About Harri
http://www.nyt.org.uk/whats-on/pigeon-english

The past is always with us, even when current events sweep us along. And while Pigeon English is startlingly contemporary, there's also a backward echo to the tragedy of little Damilola Taylor. But as this adaptation of the novel by Stephen Kelman makes clear, there's always a doppelgänger somewhere in the world in the present, future and past.

This picaresque play follows the life of Ghanaian immigrant, Harri (Seraphina Beh in cross gender casting), an 11 year old schoolboy who with his best mate Dean sets out CSI-style to solve the murder by stabbing of a young basketball ace near Luxembourg House on a London estate.

Framed Shakespearean-style with a poetic prologue (Charlotte Law) who also pushes the narrative along with diary entry type interjections, not of time but of locations.

Directed by Anna Niland with electronic and natural vocal beatboxing sound effects mixed with African inflections, we are given a map of and hear the pulse of Harri's world - estate, the ninth floor flat of Harri's family in Luxembourg House, the school, the Jubilee Centre community hall with a place for an immigrant chapel, the bus stop, the pub, the laundrette, the bins, the Catholic Church, all touched by the tribal gangs where it's either for or against,  and  overhead the sounds of the cooing, fluttering pigeons.

For Harri's migrant family, his shift-working midwife mother (Chineyne Ezeudu) and his sister Lydia (Daisy Fairclough), has also flown in to this country, leaving behind the father and baby sister Agnes with only the occasional tenuous telephone connection.

In the tribal world on the London estate everyone is making sacrifices, tributes and offerings from the schoolyard to the gangs to the Opoku family having to pay Caribbean Julius (Joshua Lyster-Downer) to whom the mother's sister, Sonia (Shalisha James-Davis) has attached herself. But Sonia has made her own sacrifice to escape the authorities, burning off the skin on her finger tips so she has no finger prints.

The two-hour piece has a televisual feel, even, or perhaps more so,  with the abused Never Normal Girl of the prologue and Harri speaking directly to the audience. The plot strands could make up a several episodes, sometimes veering off in colourful, characterful, observational directions, although a little jam packed for a stage production.

It's loud, brash and energetic with Harri, even if he is led astray or a bystander to misdemeanours, an unfailing optimist and sweet child in this new country. In short, a child with every hope for the years ahead.

Cecelia Carey's set of slender scaffolding conjures up the nooks and crannies of the estate, the schoolyard and schoolroom, inside and outside space. It raises the action on different levels, filled with geometric shapes, providing the kids of the estate with their own pigeon lofts. All fronted by a clverly constructed tunnel entrance, half representing the whole, through which we watch the action.

Beh is a determined Harri, intent on his trainers with a crush on fellow classmate Poppy whom we see only though his eyes. Felix MacKenzie Barrow as best friend Dean contrasts well, a mixture of the gormless and the streetwise.

Fairclough's Lydia tries to make her way in grown up matters beyond her years  with equally adrift but threatening mates Maquita (Arianna Beadie) and Chantelle (Natasha Heliotis). There's good work too from Nathaniel Wade as the worldly preacher, Joe Pierson as the yo-yoing Jordan, who may be more dangerous than he seems, and Kwami Odoom as gang leader X-fire with Shiv Jalota as gang member Dizzy.

Some of the best scenes are the intimate, domestic ones  with  Chineyne Ezeudu as Momma, alongside Shalisha James-Davis as her glamorous sister, Sonia, and Joshua Lyster-Downer as moneylender Julius with the two children, Harri and Lydia.  

Pigeon English is never glib but it does feel sometimes as if it is doing too much, despite the themes threaded through to integrate the plot and hints of  wider political contexts. It's a zestful episodic tale of linking stories swirling around Harri vividly and excitingly, where life for everyone, young and old, becomes riskier and riskier. Like the life it portrays it's flawed but an intense and passionate piece and it's another amber/green light for a multifaceted both spiritual and disturbingly earthbound play