|
 Two retired nuclear physicists have taken refuge in an isolated cottage by the sea, following an accident at the nuclear power station where they once worked. They have plans to live to a ripe old age, on a diet of yogurt and yoga, until an old colleague turns up unannounced, with a frightening proposal. The Children is a slow-burning, deceptively simple drama that unfolds in real time over ninety minutes. Lucy Kirkwood wrote the play in 2016, inspired by the Fukushima nuclear disaster five years earlier. The script blends biting humour with profound ethical questions about responsibility and the choices people make when faced with catastrophe.
Rob Hebblethwaite’s set provides the intimate setting for what will build into an intense confrontation between three characters who are caught in a tangled triangle of personal desires and moral dilemmas. The meticulous details bring the cottage to life - the rough stone walls, the row of kitchen cabinets, the beaten-up old armchair, and the suggestion of a garden through the windows.
The details of the cottage are important, because they give us early clues to the secrets that will be revealed. How does Rose (played with nuance by Trudi Dane) know where to find her old colleagues, given that they abandoned their house after the accident? If this is her first visit to the cottage, why does she instinctively reach for a footstool tucked under the armchair, and how does she know exactly which kitchen cabinet contains the glassware?
The lighting design by Andy Peregrine and the soundscape created by Stanley Piper add to the strong sense of time and place. Day slips into evening, while the sound of waves and cries of seagulls remind us that the cottage is on a clifftop which is slowly eroding into the sea.
The play opens with a punch, quite literally. Rose enters the cottage, bleeding from her nose, closely followed by Hazel (a masterful performance by Rosanna Preston) who has “accidentally” hit her in the face. Only, as we learn during the play, Hazel doesn’t mistakes. Hazel’s tetchy behaviour and barbed comments gradually reveal a deep-seated animosity towards Rose, with whom she worked closely at the power station for decades. The reason for this hostility comes into focus when Hazel’s husband, Robin (an engaging performance by Jon Gilmartin) arrives home.
Robin has spent the day, like every day, at the couple’s small holding inside the nuclear exclusion zone. He has brought home a rusty tricycle - a relic he has found from when their four adult children were small - and he rides it round the room like a clown at the circus. The geiger counter (which the characters handle with the same familiarity as a TV remote control) crackles gently as Hazel passes it over the tricycle. Later, it will crackle when passed over Robin — but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
A telephone call summons Hazel away, at which point the other two characters drop their masks. Not only is Rose an old flame of Robin’s - that much is known to Hazel - but the love affair continued over the decades, with passionate assignations about once a year. But Rose has a different reason for being here today - she has a stark request for her old friends. Will they join her in returning to the power station to clear up the mess, so that the younger generation of scientists can be spared exposure to the high levels of radiation?
The three of them, Rose argues, built the power station, along with its design flaws. So shouldn’t they now bear the weight of cleaning up the mess? Besides, the carcinogenic effects of radiation can take years to set in, by which time the three of them will be….. “dead”, Hazel finishes her sentence. Robin accepts Rose’s invitation with little hesitation. As the geiger counter betrays, he has already exposed himself to high levels of radiation digging graves for their cows, while telling Hazel the comforting lie that the cattle are still alive. Jon Gilmartin moves skilfully between whimsy, tragedy and black humour. What difference will more radiation make to Robin? Besides, he always works best “to a deadline”.
Rose has other dark secrets, which Trudi Dane reveals with a lightness of touch: a double mastectomy and chemotherapy which has left her with short grey hair concealed by a glossy silver wig. Cancer for her is already a reality. It is Hazel who resists for the longest. Even as the lights go down, she has not explicitly agreed, but the powerful performance by Rosanna Preston strongly suggests that she has made the moral choice. This is Rosanna’s ninth role at the Tower Theatre and it is a stand-out performance. The physicality with which she endows Hazel is eloquent - the brusque gestures at the beginning, the suspicious glances she shoots at Rose, the subtext-rich violence with which she slices a loaf of bread, and the twitchy, nervous moves at the end as she is torn between selfishness and altruism.
The Children is Jonathan Reed’s first full-length show as director at the Tower, although he has been involved in three previous productions. He was drawn to the play by its compelling story telling and the strongly-drawn, complex characters. The text has as many layers of meaning as there are strata in the cliffs beyond the cottage. Along with assistant director, Emma Cornford, Jon and the cast spent many rehearsals excavating those layers. This detailed work has paid off in the emotional depth which the actors bring to the characters and their interactions.
The direction and performances successfully capture the script’s understated intensity, making the show a thought-provoking experience that lingers with the audience long after the curtain call.
Photography by Pau Ros
|
