Theatre / bristol old vic theatre school
Review: Little One, Brewery Theatre
Touching, brave and disturbingly real, this production of Hannah Moscovitch’s Little One, running as part of Bristol Old Vic Theatre School’s Directors’ Cuts season, is unique and unsettling.
Taking place on a small, dark stage, the play is one long narrative scene set in a deceptively normal middle-class living room – neat, decorated with throw cushions, where we meet adopted siblings Claire (Kate Cavendish) and Aaron (Sam Woolf). The family live on a typically suburban street in Ottawa, Canada, where – to the untrained eye – nothing ever happens. The dark truth underneath this calm is however, very different.
Aaron speaks to the audience as if we were his counsellor, trying to untangle his difficult and bewildering feelings about his complex relationship with his parents, and about the increasingly unpredictable and violent behaviour of his sister.
Aaron is a ‘normal’ child: he plays sport, he has nice manners, he’s patient – and quiet. He’s quiet because despite the dread and fear his sister inspires in him, he wants to protect her. We learn that Claire was taken in aged four, a victim of sexual abuse she has now repressed. Her fractured mental state means that Aaron becomes just as much a victim at the hands of his sister, but is ignored by his parents whose misguided, though well-meaning attention is completely focussed on Claire.
The perfect living room slowly falls into as much of a mess as the characters’ relationships, as we learn the troubling plight of two innocents corrupted and struggling to cope in a fractured family. Their situation simply cannot be fixed by their parents’ ineffectual good intentions.
The play culminates in a cruel act by Claire. Aaron’s heartbreak at the discovery of this act triggers an emotional confession from Claire during a family holiday (another failed parental attempt to bring normality to the dark chaos) as they huddle under the upturned sofa in the now wrecked living room. She remembers. But there is nothing Aaron can do.
They are both equally helpless and irrevocably scarred. The play highlights the danger of things ignored or left unsaid, and the bigger danger and futility of trying to ‘normalise’ something that can’t be normalised.
Brilliantly acted and directed (by Laura McLean), wonderfully written and deceptively funny in places, Little One is a bold attempt to tackle the difficult subjects of abuse and mental health that ‘normal’ people often find it easier to ignore.
Little One continues at the Brewery Theatre until Saturday, May 2, as part of Bristol Old Vic Theatre School’s Directors’ Cuts season. For more info and to book tickets, visit www.tobaccofactorytheatres.com/shows/detail/bovts_directors_cuts_season_little_one/
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