The Children leaves a scorching print on its audience. It leaves a mark about legacy and the need for responsibility. There is a certain urgency in the Lyric Hammersmith’s commitment to the past and respect for the future. It is a production which triumphs and bends the genre of realism to the extreme, with some trickier moments littered throughout.
Examining a community outside the exclusion zone of a nuclear power station emergency, writer Lucy Kirkwood places a family setting within this sphere of high tension. Meera Syal, as Hazel, is the stubborn matriarch, as she comes to loggerheads with the silently flawed and obviously ill Robin (Declan Conlon). And then there is the odd one out, Rose (Kerry Fox), who becomes adamant that there is a need for action to resolve the mistakes committed by this volatile trio. They are three engineers from the old plant, but also three who form a sort of family. Drama and high relationship stakes combine with nuclear struggle and risk to form an unmatched power.
There is a great awkwardness between the characters in the play’s intense realism as Rose and Hazel initially enter the space. Kirkwood and Rachel O’Riordan form a space which is awkwardly chaotic in a great way. At the production’s opening, perhaps lines are a little stilted, and sections land strangely. It is one thing to make the scene awkward through the script, but much weight hangs on the actors also. Humour eventually cracks open this ingenious text. Sometimes a little too much, it does create a stunning force to reckon with at the play’s close when Rose’s desire to return to the power station is unleashed and her trauma is unmasked.
The power these actors hold when discussing the play’s nuclear themes is staggering. The trio force the audience into a great discomfort as the physical effects of the reactor are felt. Underscored by light rumbling sounds, Declan Conlon shines through as he subtly delivers the sacrifices and long-lasting trauma endured. Lines like “meat in the game” reflect the hopelessness of this group’s state and the physical toll of the nuclear station. Especially for the children of these three individuals, there is very little hope for the future. The actors leave an intense fear in their audience for their children, and all that will come after, bringing silences and moments of stillness perfectly into their performances.
The title is slightly strange at first glance, although slowly (with perhaps a few too many interjections of “the children”), and with some clever direction, the adults become intrinsically childish. The characters that the actors portray are both rooted in childlike behaviours and terrified for the children who come after them. They slowly, through Rose’s reckoning, become more concerned with the future than the present. This offers them the best resolution to the problems with the reactor: to commit themselves fully to it and accept death. In heartbreaking lines, Hazel comes to realise her part in endorsing nuclear power as an engineer and slowly realises she must make reparations.
With an ending which highlights the large tunnel that encloses the set, the final scenes are a little odd. This all seems a bit strange throughout, as it is never fully utilised, yet the tunnel surrounding the naturalistic scene places weight on the fact that the nuclear plant has fractured these people’s lives and that its implications will haunt their children.
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