LITTLE ONES -
double Bill
Skunk
Hour
Playwright - Robert Fraser
Director - Nicholas Bone
Tongues
Playwright - Isabel Wright
Director - Nicola McCartney
Design - Karen Tennent
Lighting Design - Fleur Woolford
Company - lookOUT Theatre Company
Venue - Traverse Theatre, Cambridge Street 0131 228 1404
Dates - 19 - 21 April 2001
then toured
Reviewer - Maureen Sangster
Skunk Hour and Tongues are marvellously acted, interesting
plays, both dealing with parental responsibility towards the child.
What are now predictable situations or concerns in present day theatre
and fiction - Skunk Hour dramatises a session with a psychologist
and Tongues explores the repercussions of child abuse - are made
unpredictable in how they're written.
Skunk Hour's theatricality depends on the wild card behaviour
of a child psychologist. Its humour derives from Robert Fraser's incisive
send-up of psychological jargon, psychology as the play implies being
the equivalent of what religion was in the past, the alleged source
of answers. A dark conflict is played out between the two parents, both
guiltless in how they have reared a child who is violent. The mother
wishes to do 'what is necessary for her child' keen even to save him
from the justice system, hoping her love will cure: the father wishes
to do 'what is best' and to hand his child over to be punished. Passions
are well acted out by Astrid Azurdia and Karl Pittom as
the parents while David Gallacher as the psychologist is a world
weary frightening master of ceremonies.
In Skunk Hour the child is an off-stage explosive charge. In
Tongues Anita Vettesse is the child and Helen Devon
her adult self. Paul Cunningham plays both the adult woman's
lover and her remembered father who though monstrous is played with
sinister reasonableness. The pain expressed by the child is hard to
listen to, as are the scenes where the child self and the adult self
come together in a realisation of what damage has been done. Isabel
Wright's Tongues is redemptive though. Love and confession heal
and for a play dealing with such a serious theme it is entrancing to
watch, with very funny episodes, beautifully staged and acted love scenes
and subtle, illuminating direction.
lookOUT have produced an evening of challenging theatre in this double
bill, allowing the plays to resonate against each other, culpability
being their theme. I thought of Greek tragedy throughout, the child
at the centre of both plays is the eternal child of myth. Has s/he been
abandoned. Is the child doomed? Modern though they are - the violent
child's father finds comfort in an Internet self-help group chat room
- these plays ask timeless questions about cause and effect.
© Maureen Sangster 20 April 2001
Skunk Hour
© Kevin Low 20001
Tongues,
Lewis, Paul Cunningham
Bridgit Helen Brown
© Kevin Low 20001