Finding, in theatre listings, one play about cross-generational relationships and another about the last day of school, you might think that such subject matter has already been over-done. So the question raised by two new productions is: to what extent can innovative staging reinvigorate familiar material?
In Seventeen, a UK premiere for Australian playwright Matthew Whittet, the trick is that school leavers, meeting up for beers in a park, are played by actors closer to 70 than 17. A similar device was used in Dennis Potter’s play Blue Remembered Hills, dramatising the idea (familiar to parents, teachers and psychoanalysts) that children carry the outline of the adult they will become: the heartbreakers and heartbroken in the classroom often destined to take the same roles later in the boardroom and bedroom.
Potter’s play was set in the past, which avoids a problem immediately thrown up by Whittet’s contemporary setting.
30 March 2017, The Tablet
Seventeen going on seventy
Seventeen, Lyric Hammersmith, London
Get Instant Access
Continue Reading
Register for free to read this article in full
Subscribe for unlimited access
From just £30 quarterly
Complete access to all Tablet website content including all premium content.
The full weekly edition in print and digital including our 179 years archive.
PDF version to view on iPad, iPhone or computer.
Already a subscriber? Login