Dear Adult – The Place, London

Director: Wency Lam

Dear Adult is a twenty-minute long piece of dance, speech and mime which caused many members of the audience to leave the auditorium sobbing. Presented as part of The Place’s Revolution Festival 2024, it is the work of dance theatre artist, Wency Lam.

As the audience enters, they see a child called Wing Wing, played by Maggie Chan Tin Lok, attempting handstands, twirling and playing with a toy crocodile. Lok is utterly believable as a small child, with her ungainly and sudden movements, small moments of concentration before sudden jumping and energy. It’s sometimes hard to believe that Wing Wing isn’t played by an actual child, except a child rehearsed for the part wouldn’t be able to seem so natural.

A narrator, played by Eden Rae Nathenson, enters and tells the audience a story about Wing Wing and her enormous feats of imagination. She’s a little irritating at first, overemphasising her words in the manner of a children’s TV presenter and distracting from Wing Wing who is downstage from her. As the piece goes on, she becomes the core of the story and drops the presenter persona.

At one point, Wing Wing and her imaginary friend, Two-two, played by Wency Lam, twirl around the stage with silken butterfly wings. The lights turn off, and the wings glow, looking like bioluminescent jellyfish.

But time marches on, and children grow out of let’s pretend games even as Wing Wing doesn’t. The narrator reflects on how she used to bribe other children with snacks to play pretend with her, which they did, but only for the time agreed on and no more. Wing Wing climbs into the rabbit hole, the subconscious space where all the bad things lurk and it’s up to the narrator to save her.

Dear Adult is a moving call to remember our inner child and a reminder that our inner child also looks after us. Lurking deep inside every adult is the playfulness and imagination of a child, and while people do need to grow up, they don’t have to stop playing.

Performed on 24 January 2024