What brings you to the brink?
That’s the question being asked on the posters.
And we get plenty of answers in this ensemble production by the Royal Exchange Theatre’s Young Company, in collaboration with award-winning author Jackie Kay MBE.
Around 20 nameless performers are ‘spat out’ into the Brink, a space that could be on the edge of the Earth’s atmosphere, somewhere you end up when life or time itself has frozen.
One character has been kicked out of his house and doesn’t know where to turn, while another just doesn’t know how to ask a girl out.
One Polish female character seems to be there simply because she can’t believe she’s in love – and her joy is undeniably infectious.
While there are happy and not so happy stories, it all adds up to create the oppressive sense of self-centredness that teenagers can truly master – but that’s likely a deliberate choice.
There’s a visual ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ moment that acknowledges (rather dramatically) that angsty teenage years are something you’ll eventually escape from, when all the heartache will be over.
That’s not to say the production is amateur.
Kay’s script is beautiful and no doubt drawn from experience in parts – her autobiography Red Dust Road details her experience of growing up in Edinburgh as the adopted black child of white parents.
TAKE THE PLUNGE: Some of the characters ‘spat out’ into the Brink, a space that could be on the edge of the Earth’s atmosphere, somewhere you end up when life or time itself has frozen
Her writing is poetic and trips off the tongue, there’s some stunning choreography and a huge amount of musical talent from individual performers.
There are several songs in the play, solos and ensembles, written by members of the cast.
The first, sung in harmony by the whole cast, knowingly states:
We are so fragile, fragile
We are like eggshells, eggshells
We are like cliches of ourselves
We ring alarm bells
Hotel bells are used to signify new arrivals and there’s a sinister sense that everyone who ends up there is at the whim of two Brinkers – who oversee and analyse each person’s experience.
However, the cast spend a little too much time explaining the concept of the brink for benefit of the audience and not enough time doing what they call ‘brinking it’ – going to the edge and wanting to jump off, whether that means falling in love or something darker.
The production runs until Sunday evening in the Royal Exchange’s intimate Studio theatre.
Images courtesy of Joel C Fildes via Royal Exchange press office, with thanks.
