This challenging play by Mark Ravenhill has an air of menace from the start. We are in the living room of a teacher's house which is under siege from a group of pupils. They have found out that he used to be the one tasked to administer 'the cane' back in the days when it was legal. His daughter - herself a teacher at an Academy school arrives and appears to be willing to help him write a report rebutting Ofsted criticisms of the school. However, her motives are compromised by her school being prime candidate to take over the runner of her father's. As events unfold, she pours a pot of coffee oto the laptop, destroying the draft report.
The play explores the complex relationships between the couple and their daughter. It appears they were glad to see the back of her when she grew up, having had a turbulent time during her upbringing, including her going for her father with an axe, the scars of which attach remain in the wall to this day. However, then the mother and daughter gang up to force him to bring the cane down from the attic and he appears both a bully and quite vulnerable.
While the play can be seen as a metaphor for the 'me too' movement and designed to get the audience thinking about the appropriateness of trying people for things that only now are crimes, it struck me as more psychoanalytic. The cane, once an object of fear from childhood, becomes less of a threat when confronted - even though it is capable of drawing blood. The father is shown as vulnerable to the uncovering of his past and at the same time to have a bullying side. The more one ponders, the more one sees.
The acting seemed to take a few minutes to warm up but ended up as a tour de force, interrupted during the 100 minutes only by a slight problem with the set. Alun Armstrong played the father, Maggie Steed, the mother and Nicola Walker the daughter in this excellent evening under the direction of Vicky Featherstone.
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