insightful in-depth reviews

cogency
2, Feb 2020
Janis Dardaris, Graham Smith, Marcia Saunders photo by Mark Garvin

The Children, a superb & troubling play

by Steve Cohen
The Cultural Critic

The Children by Lucy Kirkwood. Directed by Abigail Adams, through February 9, 2020, at People’s Light, Malvern, PA
 

The Children is a beautifully written play that’s receiving stunning performances at the Peoples Light Theater Company.

With all due respect to the actors (Janis Dardaris, Marcia Saunders and Graham Smith), they could hardly miss with material that’s this exquisite. The play has been produced in London, New York and elsewhere, and every cast has received rave reviews. The tone is set in Lucy Kirkwood’s stage directions:

“A small cottage on the East coast.
A summer’s evening.
The sound of the sea through the open door.
And Rose.
Her nose is bleeding.”

The premise is intriguing. A nuclear power meltdown has blighted a wide area. You might compare this to a disaster movie, but it has a unique and vastly different tone.

Meltdowns like this have occurred in Japan and in the Ukraine, with deadly effect, so this play affects many cultures and ethnicities. It spotlights the danger faced if all nations fail to work together to confront the crisis. The play is based on the disaster in Fukushima Japan in 2019 but is cast with Caucasian actors — which illustrates the universality of the theme.

The real achievement is what Kirkwood does with the premise. Dialogue sounds natural, as if improvised on the spot. Tragic events unfold with darkly humorous comments, while emphasis is on the characters more than on the events. There are plenty of surprises but the smart writing and the acting make everything seem inevitable.

The three characters are physicists who were involved in the building of a nuclear plant on the British coast many years earlier. Now we see how each of them cope with the accident that destroyed the plant, devastated their nation — and imperils their lives.

Hazel and her husband Robin (Saunders and Smith) have retreated to an isolated cottage where Rose (Dardaris) arrives with a challenging plan. As they talk, we come to understand the tensions in their longtime relationships. And the embers of an old triangle are re-awakened.

The harrowing story terrifies, and provokes philosophical contemplation. Abigail Adams directs naturalistically, while terrific lighting effects by Dennis Parichy inform us of their nation’s faltering electrical grid. Sound Designer Lee Kinney produces the sounds of surf and seagulls, plus an ominous Geiger counter.

The title refers to the question of what these characters, and we, owe to the next generation.