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THE CHILDREN
Royal Court, Jerwood
In 2013, Lucy Kirkwood made quite a
splash with her multi-award winning
political drama Chimerica in which the
edgy relationship between China and
America came under complex scrutiny
when the photographer of that lone
protestor In Tiananmen Square discovers
the subject of this hauntingly iconic
image may have emigrated to the US.
In her outstanding new play, The
Children, the splash Ms Kirkwood
makes is, admittedly, more modest in
scale – there are only three characters in
it – but the impact is bigger.
Photos: Johan Persson.
The setting is a small cottage on the
east coast of England inhabited by Hazel
(Francesca Annis) and Robin (Ron
Cook) two retired nuclear physicists
of ‘a certain age’.
An earthquake has caused a
Fukushima-like meltdown of the nearby
nuclear plant at which they once worked,
and, despite the seeming normality of
their lives (he’s now a farmer, she’s a
jobbing housewife and mother of four
concerned more with domesticity rather
than science), it soon becomes clear
they’re literally living under a cloud of
radio active fall-out. Food is scarce and
there is no electricity until 10 o’clock
each night.
The third character is Rose (Deborah
Findlay), an erstwhile friend and
colleague. She’s been living and working
in America and hasn’t seen Hazel and
Robin in 38 years.
Rose’s unannounced arrival creates
an immediate tension between the two
women whose initial small-talk is an
awkward procrastination of more serious
issues, one of them being that Robin
was something of a lady’s man in his
day and had an affair with Rose before
and after he married Hazel.
And although it is made quite clear
that the sexual frisson between Robin
and Rose hasn’t disappeared completely
(a fact Hazel is well aware of), the real
purpose of Rose’s visit is to persuade
her long-standing friends to hasten their
inevitable deaths by unselfishly helping
to clean up the mess at the nuclear
plant, thereby allowing the younger
generation to live the rest of their lives
without contamination.
Blaming the baby-booming
generation of the sixties for a potential
apocalyptic catastrophe, Kirkwood is, in
essence, embarking on an extended guilt
trip in which the sins of the father’s are
being visited on their children. But there
is nothing preachy about her approach.
Everything springs convincingly from
her strikingly defined trio of protagonists
whose revelations as the play slowly
unfurls, are as natural as they are
unexpected. One of the highlights of the
evening is an impromptu dance to Joe
Brown’s ‘Ain’t it Funky Now’ that
develops effortlessly from the situation
in which the characters find themselves
and which beautifully and effectively add
further facets to their complex
personalities.
When it comes to creating
undercurrents of mood and tension,
director James Macdonald has no equal.
Blessed with a brilliant cast capable of
expressing a full spectrum of emotions
often without uttering a word, he takes
full advantage of their abilities to make
every nuance and gesture meaningful.
Deborah Findlay seemingly in control
as Hazel conceals a cruel, obsessive
streak (especially when it comes to
lavatories!), Francesca Annis brings a
distanced, unspoken mystique to the part
of Rose that borders, at times, on gameplaying;
while Ron Cook as Robin, the
most conflicted of the trio, mixes outward
bonhomie and inner fear and frustration
with the subtlest of gear changes.
Miriam Buether’s wonderfully detailed
coastal cottage and Peter Mumford and
Max Pappenheim lighting and sound
design respectively add resonance to
what might arguably be the best new
British play of the year.
CLIVE HIRSCHHORN
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