Savage Children
egg theatre, Bath
Savage Children is the umbrella title of two very different plays in Bath this month whose aim is to provoke in youngsters all kinds of questions about who we are, how we live, and the choices we make.
Wild Girl is about Memmie, a nine-year-old who, driven by hunger and thirst, steps out of the woods one day into the village of Songi in 1731. She looks primitive, filthy, and is covered in rags and skins. Grown men cower in fear believing she is a witch, but one wealthy and childless couple wishes to save her.
Memmie herself never appears on stage. Instead her story is partly told, partly enacted by the couple that wins her trust.
Actors Dean Rehman and Gehane Strehler play their roles skillfully, switching back and forth from savage to civilised, all the while subtly raising questions about our perceptions of what is right and what is wrong.
It's beautifully done, if perhaps a tad too long for primary school age. And any pre-teen fashionista faced with the sort of clothes Memmie is asked to wear would, like her, run screaming back to the forest.
But then, could this be a talking point around school uniforms, acceptance and individual choices? Discuss.
The second play concerns the story of Mirad, Boy From Bosnia, first written 20 years ago by Ad de Bont as a way of counteracting what he saw as the false 'youthland' of Western Europe.
Aimed at an older age group (14-up), it is the stark tale of a young boy's survival during the Bosnian civil war, despite the loss of his parents and time spent in soulless refugee camps.
Not many kids here today could contemplate walking 90km – from Bath to Cardiff, say – as he did in Bosnia when faced with the loss of his family, fearful, travelling only at night, before finally being sent off to Holland to start a new life.
This is the strength of the play, that it puts in perspective so strongly the lives of others compared to our own, and makes us look hard at how hatred is engendered, how we view refugees, other nations or other religions.
Rehman and Strehler also tell this story, but bleakly, apologizing almost for existing in a foreign country having been 'blown by the wind' from their own.
John Retallack directs both plays in the first four-way collaboration between the egg, the Bristol Old Vic, Dukes Playhouse in Lancaster and Theatr Iolo in Cardiff. And both are designed so that they can be taken out into schools and the community and also performed within the theatres.
Savage Children is an exciting concept that should surely stimulate lively debates in young people about the society we live in today. And the two actors involved are by turn engaging, chatting to the youngsters as they wait for the audience to settle, and then believably immersed in their roles in each of the plays.
It's on this week until Saturday June 8, and then returns at the end of the month from June 27-29. Contact the theatre on 01225 448844 / 823409 or visit www.theatreroyal.org.uk for times and tickets. Bookings may be made for one or other or for the double bill, and there is a wild food supper on Thursday June 27.
Jackie Chappell