Middle-class family angst continues to be this season’s theme at the Royal Court, but this time it is seen through the eyes of 10-year-old girls at a 1990s boarding school. But don’t expect this to be an episode of Malory Towers or even the rather good-natured naughtiness of St Trinian’s. No, although CV Crowe’s Kin is a story about an equally privileged place for equally privileged girls, there is a nastier edge to the school.
In fact, this is a bleak institution where the girls are foulmouthed and vicious in their rivalry. As Mrs B, who supervises the dorms, says to the headmistress: “They are small dogs doing what small dogs do.” However, although this canine metaphor is very promising, the play itself is a slight 70-minute piece which never delivers on its potential.
While Crowe paints a vivid and atmospheric picture of this boarding school, with its girlish emotions and childish rivalries, the play is thin on plot and shallow in its view of contemporary Britain. The story, such as it is, concerns Mimi and Janey, who share a dorm. Mimi gets the part of Proctor in the school play, Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, which also features the girls’ rival, Nina, as Proctor’s wife.
Although this choice of play does not reflect the relationships between the girls, it does suggest something of the hothouse atmosphere of gossip, denunciation and revenge that permeates this institution. Certainly, Crowe’s language zips and zings with idioms– “annie” for anorexic, “whispers” for bedtime after the lights go out and “homesick” meaning sick of home – but the plotting of the play, with Mimi and Janey’s friendship coming under strain when Nina accuses Janey of being a bully, is a tad perfunctory.
The plot also suffers from having the additional, and unnecessary, complication of a “then” and “before” format. If some features of the school’s regime are convincing – especially the embarrassing phone calls home – the experience of watching the play is oddly unsatisfying. What does work is the fact that a group of very young actors can enjoy making their professional debuts. In the process, they are delightful in the extreme contrast between their tiny physiques and their adult language, with its blatant swearing.
Ciara Southwood as Mimi and Mimi Keene as Janey are engaging and entertaining, and Fern Deacon as Nina is equally excellent. Annette Badland is similarly convincing as their supervising teacher, Mrs B, while Kevin McMonagle is Mr Thorne, the school governor, and Skins’ Ollie Barbieri plays Mimi’s older brother.
Jeremy Herrin’s production – on Bunny Christie’s bleak set – captures the hectic emotions of boarding-school life and uses a soundtrack of howling dogs and uncanny shuddering to create a feeling of menace. But the play is much too short to have anything substantial to say about British life today and there is an absence of politics. In the end, it merely offers its audience a snappy lesson rather than a full term’s worth of entertainment. Report card: could do better.
