Writers: Abi Zakarian and Siân Owen
Directors: Matt Yeoman (Age is Revolting) and Jo Crook (The Periodicals)
Students from Queen’s Park High School will certainly remember the first time they entered the National Theatre Connections Festival and performed a rock and roll Sweet Child O’ Mine on the Dorfman stage as the conclusion to Abi Zakarian’s ageing-friendly play Age is Revolting, with a wildly entertaining guitar solo by Joe Mayman, who raises the showmanship to the level of a major stadium. This 60-minute piece about a magical teacher and a bit of time travel continues a theme in the Festival’s new work as a group of students are catapulted into their future.
With ideas about living forever and never appreciating the real lives of their grandparents, the play toys with ideas about feeling like the same person whatever age you are but also explains the physical toll on the body as the 14-year-olds discover achy backs, dodgy knees and a love of bingo in their 80s. There is a lot to keep track of with escape plots, discarded toys coming to life and a merging of worlds when Nina (Lucy Lawrence), Arpi (Yaroslava Loponova), Barney (Toby Mulholland) and Mo (Max Oldfield) relive scenes they have played from a younger perspective.
The characters also reflect on their own family stories as Arpi in particular looks into the past of her own grandmother and mother fleeing persecution – a common thread in Zakarian’s work – and these newly cast OAP-children experience a blending of realities with Barney’s grandfather Bob appearing as their contemporary. But Age is Revolting is full of funny lines and some entertaining comic performances from the Queen’s Park High School GCSE Drama class.
The second play in this double bill is also a futuristic piece, Siân Owen’s The Periodicals which transports Plympton Academy students into a dystopian future where “Ghost Children” flee the new truancy laws and set up secret camps where they live off their wits trying to hide from the evil Home Secretary’s zero-tolerance military mindset – no prizes for guessing who the inspiration for that particular character might be.
Tonally, this is really different to all the other Festival plays so far and Plympton Academy has worked hard to establish the moody and dangerous tone needed to create the world around the central group of runaway children, all named after chemical elements. Great work too in the stage design with moveable trollies and boxes covered in rags to give the place a futuristic junkyard feel, but also a sense of scale as secret routes and hidden equipment are revealed.
With a perfectly pitched performance from Eloise Trevor as the stern Maude Hatchett handling the Press with the same disdain she has for the children, it sets the tone for others including Ethan Wain’s ambiguous newbie Evian, Josh Wallace’s reluctant leader Mercury and the remaining group of ‘Methanes’ who react against the external control being imposed on them.
Two shows with very different energies, the latest double bill from the National Connections Festival is a memorable night for everyone involved.
Reviewed on 27 June 2024
The National Theatre Connections Festival runs until 29 June 2024
