One of the best things about the Edinburgh Fringe Festival is the chance it affords to see the work of young playwrights, actors and directors from around the world. Among the many neophyte theater companies appearing at the 2012 Fringe was the Lyric Youth Company (which is attached to the Lyric Hammersmith in W. London).
The LYC's artistic director, Sean Holmes, was strongly influenced by the work of the Junges Theatre in Basel, Switzerland. The new play, Morning (by Simon Stephens), which he unveiled at the Fringe, was developed with three young people from Basel and three from Hammersmith, Holmes explains in a program note. "The play came out of their concerns, experiences and interests."
Morning focuses on the relationship between two girls, Stephanie and Cat (brought powerfully to life by Scarlet Billham and Joana Nastari). The latter is about to shatter the bonds of their tight, claustrophobic friendship by leaving to start college. That prospect is best summed up in the dialogue that follows: "It'll be shit here after you've gone." "Yeah." "There'll be nothing to do." "There never is."
Out of this bored, blasé exchange is born an act of violence directed at Cat's hapless boyfriend Stephen (Ted Reilly). The act is carried out with a casualness and indifference that is as chilling as it is horrific. They simply killed him because he was there.
Inspired by the 2010 murder of a 15-year-old Welsh teenager by her ex-boyfriend in a bet over breakfast, Morning could be easily dismissed as an exercise in teenage nihilism. It's a lot more than that, though -- it's a reminder that many kids today feel that they are trapped in a world they never made, a world that has no use or place for them. Hence their anger, their need to lash out at someone or something.
Consider the speech by Stephanie that concludes the play: "...there is no connection with anything and there is no future and all of the city is full of shit and there is waste everywhere...Everybody wants a message and there is none. Everybody wants hope shining through the darkness and there isn't any. And we could take to the streets and it won't change anything. We could stand on the streets and give our fliers and it won't change anything....We could smash in shop windows. We could repair all the shop windows. We could set fire to cars. We could repair all of the burned-out cars. We could recycle. We could refuse to recycle. None of it will change anything. There is only terror. There is no hope."
Stephens's savage but courageous play is a cry from the heart of the next generation. Is anybody out there listening?
