Writer: Chris Salt
Director: Janys Chambers
Edgeways Productions are touring Chris Salt’s excellent new play for most of October, playing mostly one nighters at, in some cases, non-theatrical spaces. The Square Chapel is now a fine theatre venue, but the style of Janys Chambers’ taut production, set mainly in a flexible arrangement of boxes and chests – with practical cooking arrangements – would fit anywhere.
Lyle, a schoolboy of nearly 15, has – it appears – wandered from home on a whim and encounters Jake, 17 years old, living rough on the fells, fishing, trapping rabbits, shooting grouse. Initial wariness gives way to a reluctant friendship, though always the unexpected throws up unanswered questions. Why is Jake so uneasy at the arrival of the as yet unseen Lyle? Why does Lyle alternate between greedy self-confidence and helplessness?
However, it seems like a conventional enough tale. Jake is at home on the fells, his gun almost a part of him; Lyle, inappropriately dressed and unfit, is quite incapable of surviving on the fells and needs him as a protector. But the conventional story – though figuring in a dramatic episode near the end – is only part of it. As the layers are stripped away, Jake is revealed as less self-confident than appears at first (his back-story is always half-revealed, never fully), but Lyle is the one with the big secret.
The dialogue is, for the most part, naturalistic, with unexpected twists, but the story develops in a way that could be considered melodramatic, were it not for the truth of the writing and acting. Ned Cooper and Tom Claxton deliver remarkable performances, understated for much of the time, with outbreaks of violent emotion. Claxton’s Jake, grudgingly welcoming, looks after Lyle whilst arousing his anger with the patronising assumption that he is just on “a little adventure”, then is forced into an agonising confrontation of his past demons. Cooper, with all of a nearly 15-years-old’s gaucheness, brings out Lyle’s odd mix of character vividly and, in the later stages, with desperate stillness, reveals his secret.
Jane Linz Roberts’ designs are deliberately and appropriately primitive and Simon Adams’ sound helps to re-create the world of the fells and, ultimately, the powerful reach of 21st century urban life.
Reviewed on 18th October 2023. Touring until 29th October 2023.
