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Nell Barlow as Kathy and Maximus Evans as Phillip. Picture: Hugo Glendinning Never Let Me Go Malvern Theatres **** Art is life and what better way to fully understand the dystopian path set in Kazuo Ishiguro’s best- selling novel Never Let Me Go than to accept your fate and watch this new stage adaptation of an alternative reality written by Suzanne Heathcote at Malvern Theatres this week. Poignantly portrayed by Kathy H, (Nell Barlow), as a carer for donors, she reminisces about a past spent at a boarding school in the middle of the countryside called Halisham, where organ donors were harvested with a difference. Kathy bares all about the guardians and relationships formed to her latest assignment Phillip, (Maximus Evans), to quell the rumours and quash the lies passed on about the orchestrated hope and creativity encouragement, along with a desire to love and be healthy. Kathy discovers her close friends Ruth C, (Matilda Bailes) and Tommy D, (Angus Imrie), are together as a couple which catapults her passion for music as a distraction to her jealousy, after a school sale, Kathy finds a cassette tape containing songs by Judy Bridgwater, recorded by Olivier Award nominee Marisha Wallace from Guys and Dolls. Kathy, Ruth and Tommy move to the Cottages when they are only 16 years old to carry on with their training and struggle with the revelation that they are all clones with a very specific purpose and a very short life span. What if you discovered your whole reason for being was not about your life but about making someone else’s possible? Why not just run away from it all? Kathy follows the carer route and Ruth and Tommy soon are called up to make their first donations as they go their separate ways, but there is always hope, hope that as couples they may be able to be deferred for a few years and Madame, Emily Patry and Miss Emily, Susan Aderin, admit their fears to the clones about the clones and expel their heart wrenching truth. Will Tommy and Kathy find love and solace or will their souls become silenced? Having seen the 2010 film with Keira Knightley, Andrew Garfield and Carey Mulligan, I wondered how the director Christopher Haydon could transform this love triangle and bring the heart to the stage and as adaptations go, I would go as far to say that this is even better than the film, with more unease, tension and questions developed throughout this fast-paced narrative. The set and costume designer Tom Piper fluidly expands the set to a clinic, beach, school and town as one door opens, another closes. The terror and apprehension is most fittingly shown as the surgeons and consultants swarm around Ruth’s hospital bed anonymously wearing facemasks and as they shove her head back onto the pillow and wheel her away for completion, the abhorrent reality hits you and the haunting morality of life and death leave you breathless and bereft. Never Let Me Go allows you to contemplate our future generations, the meaning of life and what it is to be human. Tickets from the box office on 01684 892277 or online at www.malvern-theatres.co.uk. To 02-11-24 Emma Trimble 29-10-24 |
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