Over Another Rainbow

By Jonathan Jones

Wednesday, June 29, 2011 

I always have difficulty remembering the conceit of the Connections Festival at the Royal National Theatre and until tonight, I wasn’t sure exactly why. The thing is, it’s children’s theatre written by professional playwrights from around the UK performed by a variety of youth ensembles. I would gather that as enjoyable as these performances may be for the audiences who attend, the works are largely forgotten soon after their tour and, if selected, their performance at the National, an unfortunate fate, for while the work we saw tonight certainly needed more work, there really were some clever moments that should have more opportunities to be seen.

Tonight’s entry, Too Fast by Scottish playwright Douglas Maxwell told the tale of an unconventional funeral service for a teenage girl who was killed in a car accident. Rather than play up the requisite histrionics and emotional outpouring, Maxwell chose to give the piece a detached edge, similar to Heathers or Pump Up the Volume with a mix of Glee. While the work was nowhere near as dark or subversive as the aforementioned films, the glee club members took on a style akin to Mean Girls, etc – in which (like Heathers) they were far more concerned with their own teenage ambitions (popularity, passion, and precocious perfundity) to concern themselves at all with the funeral happening just outside the door of their rehearsal room.

And then came the singing…a rather odd arrangement of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” presumably intentionally presented in such a way that we were indeed transported to a “Rainbow” from another land – in this case, a land of dancing, tumbling, clowning, and mime. This dream sequence was perhaps the most effective part, given that the preceding scenes have all be dealt with before in the various mediums already mentioned. But this dream ballet, while reminiscent in some ways of Wily Wonka’s factory in the original 1972 film and in other ways akin to The Lovely Bones film adaptation, really explored a vision of death seldom explored in works for children. At the curtain call, the playwright said of the work that he wanted to bring the audience, “Closer to the river….closer to life,” and this indeed made the hour completely worthwhile.

Too Fast was performed by the Scarborough Youth Theatre and directed by Maria Arnold and Julie Hatton.

http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/58110/connections-plays/too-fast.html

Here is an excerpt from a different production: