Never Let Me Go completed its run in London to head to Northampton, before its opening night last night in Malvern. It’s now in Malvern until 2nd November, before it heads to Bristol's The Old Vic for a longer run until the 23rd November.
It is the stage adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's 2005 dystopian novel of the same name. I suddenly realised when I went to take my seat that I had no idea what it was about - life has been a whirlwind lately - and I wasn’t really in the mood for something that would scare me or leave me feeling unsettled. As it was, it struck, for me personally, the right tone of heartbreaking, tear jerking, and thought provoking to be a memorable piece of theatre, without leaving me terrified for the future. Perhaps that's naive on my part... I was thinking "well the NHS would never be able to do that", but there are enough rich people in the world that others could. And I think that's emphasised more in the book than it was on stage. I learned some details from the book on the journey home which I didn’t learn from the play, so if you’re a fan of the novel don’t expect perhaps the same level of detail as to the background of what’s happening and why. But that's not to say it doesn't carry a lot of gravitas - you absolutely feel the weight, and absolute sadness, of what the characters are going through.
I haven’t read the book, or seen the 2010 film, but this feels like a brilliantly clever adaptation. I say that because of the way it jumps back into memories so often - but memories enacted by the whole cast, not just told by the person remembering them. We witness the beginning of “in jokes” and then see them evolve and hear them quoted back, giving us a sense of time passing and us joining the characters on their life journey. As Mark Lawson wrote in the Guardian, it would have been easy for it to be one long monologue from the main character, Kathie (Nell Barlow), but it was far from that, with her only addressing the audience directly once when feeling completely isolated.
The cast of 9 were all brilliant. Most of them play more than one role, and they seamlessly work together to constantly change the set, tone and pace of the story. The simple set is constantly changed by the cast - slight but distinctive furniture rearrangements - to blend scenes and times together, with the first line of one scene often said at the end of another to bridge the two. I'm now very curious as to the structure of the orginal book, and whether it's based on re-telling of memories or whether it happens in real time (I assume the former actually, as it was last night).
Fans of Brave New World or 1984 should absolutely see this when it hits Bristol, or just anyone who wants to see a novel brilliantly depicted in a creative way, with fantastic acting and a strong message about compassion.
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