Teenage dreams are pure poetry
TWO young actors make their stage debuts in a charming and touching play, but that’s not the full story.
One of the performers, 21-year-old Maisie Williams, has already had big success on screen, not least with Game Of Thrones. Yet here she is at the gallant hampstead, earning her theatre spurs. Good for her. The show is well worth catching and she fizzes with stage presence.
Lauren Gunderson’s I And You is on one level a fluent, chatty, distinctly American teenagers’ tale. Caroline and Anthony are both 17. Caroline (Miss Williams) has liver disease and is now confined to her home bedroom, a large, untidy room where all the action occurs. Through its skylight we can see a big moon and occasional falling snow.
The arrival of Anthony ( Zach Wyatt) in the opening moment is a surprise to Caroline, who presumes he must be an intruder. Anthony explains that he is in her class at school and they have to co- operate on an english project about the poet Walt Whitman.
The first part of the 90-minute evening consists of sardonic Caroline slowly dropping her suspicion of the bookish, handsome Anthony.
DURING the second half she starts to relish Whitman’s poetry and things take a more significant turn which is hard to describe without spoiling the show.
At Wednesday’s final preview, Miss Williams’s clarity needed some tiny improvement, but director edward hall will no doubt rectify that.
There may be occasional moments in the early stages when you wonder if the play will ever escape the shallows. But let me plead with you to stay the course. The conclusion brings a coup de theatre in plot and staging. I was left in a bit of a blur, its closing moments having whacked me emotionally.
Williams and Wyatt are well matched and establish a sweet chemistry, she giving Caroline a cheeky energy — at moments I was reminded of sheridan smith — and he establishing just the right air of professorial geekiness of some earnest teenage boys.
Caroline’s potentially fatal liver disease makes her an unusual classmate. ‘Don’t be nice to me,’ she snarls, ‘it makes me want to break glass. Nice is fake.’
she admits that she is like a dachshund in that she suffers f rom ‘small-dog rage’.
Despite the shadow of Caroline’s illness, and the related story of a boy at their school who dies on the basketball court, the two bubble with all the ambition and optimism of youth. The show is suffused not with the bleakness that you might expect, but with a strong sense of potential and promise. They dream of visits to big cities, of riding in taxis, of standing on a Manhattan terrace and watching the city’s glittering lights. Will Caroline ever get to savour such heady experiences? And will Anthony? Parents of teenage children may find this a bit of a gulper, but I recommend it most heartily.