Fight and Flight: a contemporary story of fleeing an abusive parent
Run, Rebel
at the Oxford Playhouse
from Wednesday, October 16 to Saturday 19
Review by JON LEWIS
TESSA Walker’s Pilot Theatre production of Run, Rebel, Manjeet Mann’s adaptation of her successful young adult novel, is a contemporary story about fleeing an abusive parent.
Amber (Jessica Kaur, a multifaceted performance) is 15, a schoolgirl and a sprinter whose talent holds out the possibility of running for Britain. Her older sister Ruby (Simran Kular) married a man she does not love so that she could move away from her traditional parents Harbans (Pushpinder Chani) and Surinder (Asha Kingsly) Rai.
Harbans, a wild-haired unemployed drunk and his pliant, docile low-paid wife don’t speak English and are illiterate. Harbans keeps Amber in a permanent state of fear by telling her stories of the man living opposite who murdered his own daughter in an honour killing, warning Amber to always obey his diktats.
Amber’s imagination goes into overdrive as she imagines this man pruning his roses, a video screen showing projected images of the man’s staring face, the thick plants like the thorn bushes around Sleeping Beauty’s castle.
A history lesson at school about the French revolution sparks Amber into thinking about rebelling against her father. He believes it is unseemly for Amber to be seen by boys wearing athletics gear and refuses to let her join athletics practice.
Amber’s best friends, Tara (Heather Forster), who is into new age philosophies and David (Kiran Raywilliams), whose own parents rebelled against their parents to marry, spent the summer holiday abroad together. Amber fears they are now a couple. Her anger about this, and the abandonment of her running dreams, turn her into a bully at school, harassing a wealthy female classmate for allegedly looking down upon her.
This typically inventive Pilot production, with its skateboard rink flooring (designer, Debbie Duru), animation and video design (Daniel Denton and Ben Glover), crackly sound design (Yonne Gilbert) and catchy South Asian music (composer, Niraj Chag) fizzes with energy.
All the cast except Kaur play multiple roles, populating Amber’s world with a panoply of memorable characters.
It is a shame that there were only about 50 in the theatre: this quality company deserved a much larger audience.
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