Serious questions (about the nature of reality, and the effects of disabling illness) are broached thoughtfully, but never laboured. It feeds generously that youthful sense of mystery and fantasy we so easily lose as adults, and does so in a visual language which an immaculately attentive audience of 250 local schoolchildren clearly found engrossing.
The smaller parts of mother Helen (Mary Moulds), tutor Miss Chesterfield (Rosie McClelland), and Dr Burton (Paul Lewis-Ferguson) are capably taken. Dermott Hickson’s part is smaller, but his Mark is equally impressive, catching the pent-up frustrations of a polio sufferer without resort to ranting. It’s a beautifully paced performance, no emotional climax tugged at too greedily, no saggy lacunae in more trivial, workaday transactions. At one point Mark emerges startlingly from underneath it, causing the present writer to jolt alarmingly (and he’s supposed to be an adult).īelfast actress Susan Davey, as Marianne, holds the stage for virtually the entire 70 minutes. She’s 22 in reality, but looks younger, and acts down very effectively, carefully avoiding inappropriately mature gestures or expressions. It springs a few surprises, sliding into an upright position (“oohs” from the packed stalls seating) when Marianne commences dreaming, and transmogrifying into a couple of pull-out bicycles (“aahs” and laughter) for Marianne and Mark (the boy) later. The wrought-iron bedstead stage-centre is another focus of visual attention. Patrick Sanders’ deftly economical sketches work excellently for a young audience, clearly communicative yet at the same time recognisably something a 10-year-old might be capable of producing. When he’s hungry, she sketches food for him when he’s tired, a bed to lie on. Clever, computer-generated graphics transform the drably grey-washed walls of Marianne’s bedroom as she creates, for instance, a staircase for the mystery boy, freeing him from captivity. Replay Theatre Company’s answer is equally straightforward: if you can’t beat them at the IT lark, join them. The problem for any company staging the piece is simple: how do you bring the fantasy elements alive in performance, making them convincing for the current generation of scarily techno-savvy 10-13 year-olds, Buffini’s target audience? These, in outline, are the bare bones of the story playwright Moira Buffini has filleted from Marianne Dreams, Catherine Storr’s 1958 fantasy novel for children.
But who is he? And why can he not come down from his first-floor window to see her? At night, dreaming, Marianne finds herself outside the house that she has sketched earlier. Bed-ridden and constantly attended to by Mother and a crisply efficient doctor, she relieves the tedium by drawing pictures.
Marianne is ten years old, and sick with a fever.
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