The National Youth Theatre – which counts Helen Mirren and Daniel Day-Lewis amongst its past students – turns 60 this year. So it’s perhaps appropriate then that this three-section play, part of an NYT season at the Finborough Theatre, deals with the issues of growing old in an increasingly unforgiving society.
A lone bed forms the essence of Chris Hone’s stripped-back set. The first section is a two-hander between a pair of horny young workers at a care home, who flirt, chat and struggle to picture becoming frail and elderly. The second, another two-hander, charts a relationship compromised by the stresses and costs of caring for an invalid parent. The third returns us to the care home, though now it belongs to an imagined future society where assisted dying is not only legal but actively encouraged.
Writer James Fritz – himself an NYT alumnus – delivered the excellent ‘Ross & Rachel’ last year, and the inventive po-mo touches from that play reappear here. But while each part of Matthew Harrison’s production shares obvious common ground, their formal differences end up setting them against each other. It’s the second section that comes off the best, the couple’s relationship changing from teenage fumblings to worn-out marriage in a matter of minutes. More heavy-handed is the cast’s choreographed routine to One Direction’s ‘While We’re Young’ between each segment. If anything, it’s their fresh faces that provide all the necessary irony.