{"id":1487,"date":"2017-05-22T14:12:51","date_gmt":"2017-05-22T13:12:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/?p=1487"},"modified":"2017-05-22T14:19:01","modified_gmt":"2017-05-22T13:19:01","slug":"never-such-innocence-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/2017\/05\/never-such-innocence-again.html","title":{"rendered":"Never such innocence again"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

We huddled from the rain under a small platform shelter at Hackney Wick the other night. Which was great, because it meant eavesdropping without strain on the couple arguing about This Beautiful Future<\/em><\/a>, the play we\u2019d just seen at the Yard Theatre. An amicable but irreconcilable disagreement, it boiled down to this:<\/p>\n

HER: Lovely!
\nHIM: Offensive!
\nHER: Baby chicks!
\nHIM: Nazis!<\/p>\n

Then the train arrived, so I have no idea if they were still speaking by Kensal Rise. I was fascinated, because I havered between the two positions. Despite Jay Miller\u2019s acutely accomplished production with its headlong performances, and despite the dazzling intelligence of the text itself, I went to sleep troubled by Rita Kalnejais\u2019 play, and woke more troubled still.<\/p>\n

The evening plays brilliantly with a double perspective: the sugar-rush of first love and the hangover of ageing distance. Close-up optimism and long-lens melancholy. We first meet Alwyne Taylor and Paul Haley, older actors who introduce themselves as each makes for one of the karaoke booths on either side of the stage. They sing lovesongs (Adele, Charles Trenet) with the touching incongruity of people for whom you might expect puppy love to be only a memory.<\/p>\n

Between them, a turf-covered circle is backed by a projection in raspberry-sundae colours of a small town (designer, C\u00e9cile Tr\u00e9moli\u00e8res). In a a deserted house in provincial France, 1944, two teenagers rendezvous \u2013 town resident \u00c9lodie and Otto, a soldier in the occupying army. But there\u2019s nothing period about the writing or acting. Brilliantly played by Bradley Hall and, especially, Hannah Millward, they\u2019re utterly contemporary. Uptick inflections, trailing sentences, slang and sass and silliness. It\u2019s essence of adolescence, 2017 model.<\/p>\n

Kalnejais plunges into the squirm of teenage lust-love, all heart and hormone. But these aren\u2019t any teens \u2013 spoilers ahead<\/em>. There\u2019s a war on, and the play very deliberately enmeshes them both in the horror. The Jewish owners of the house where they meet have, Otto insists, gone to their deaths. Their son was hidden with \u00c9lodie\u2019s family \u2013 but her mother turned him out and he has almost certainly been killed \u2013 quite possibly by Otto himself. \u00c9odie\u2019s father is away \u2013 \u2018in Hamburg, making buttons,\u2019 which sounds like it covers a harsher truth. Otto has been part of a firing squad, killing political prisoners before the Allied forces arrive. They\u2019re in this horrible war up to their necks \u2013 and Otto, at least, is ideologically committed to the atrocities.<\/p>\n

Kalnejais was inspired to write by an image of a young Frenchwoman, shorn and shamed, after the liberation. \u2018She\u2019s meant to look guilty,\u2019 the playwright has said<\/a>, \u2018and she doesn\u2019t \u2013 she looks like the most innocent thing ever.\u2019 \u00c9lodie\u2019s 17, and Otto 15., and their ages seem crucial. This is the last point at which they might claim innocence, or at which adolescent desire might wash out the knowledge of their context. Never such innocence again. Two years older, and you\u2019d not grant them a pass.<\/p>\n

Kalnejais says she wanted to write something \u2018hopeful, delicious and gorgeous\u2019, and most responses to the play have foregrounded the lovely. Yet I registered it as a guilt story. She could have placed star-crossed lovers in a less emotive context; so it seems more a tale of complicity than intimacy. Yes, they\u2019re \u2018on the wrong side of history,\u2019 as Matt Trueman<\/a> writes \u2013 but they have in part placed themselves there. Each knows enough of what they\u2019re getting into \u2013 the most rhapsodic version of a \u2018beautiful future\u2019 is Otto\u2019s paean to \u2018Mr Hitler\u2019s\u2019 cleansed Europe. It\u2019s an uncomfortable statement of naivety on the very verge of adulthood, from someone carrying a smoking gun.<\/p>\n

The fundamental things apply<\/strong><\/p>\n

What happens to the pair after they part, on the morning the Allied troops arrive, isn\u2019t lovely either. The judgement we might consider is passed with severity: tar and feather for the hussy, a bullet for the brute. Are they youngsters facing a terror beyond their comprehension, or a guilty pair facing the consequences? Both, probably.<\/p>\n

I thought of Casablanca.<\/em> Rick and Ilsa insist the fundamental things apply, but they\u2019re war-worn adults without illusions. The coda at the Yard \u2013 in which peeping baby chicks are released, in which Alwyne and Paul tend the youngsters (like their parents, their older selves, their songtime guardian angels) brought some to tears, and others to platform disagreement. We\u2019re asked to stay our applause until the chicks are stowed, less we frighten them \u2013 and of course we do, we\u2019re not monsters. It\u2019s a real act with real consequences. What of the fictional acts and their consequences, how do we feel about them?<\/p>\n

Kalnejais has a firm hand on the nuance of complicity, the halfway house between innocence and stained experience. In some ways, she writes more acutely about that blur than an overly neat Jez Butterworth does in The Ferryman<\/em><\/a>. This Beautiful Future<\/em>, from its teasing title to its morning-after pall, is a test of the audience. Where do we place responsibility? Is there enough lovely in the world to lift the horror? Lovely or offensive? Chicks or Nazis?<\/p>\n

Photo by Richard Lakos<\/em><\/p>\n

Follow David on Twitter \u2013 @mrdavidjays<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We huddled from the rain under a small platform shelter at Hackney Wick the other night. Which was great, because it meant eavesdropping without strain on the couple arguing about This Beautiful Future, the play we\u2019d just seen at the Yard Theatre. An amicable but irreconcilable disagreement, it boiled down to this: HER: Lovely! HIM: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1488,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1487","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1487"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1492,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1487\/revisions\/1492"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}