Theatre review: Stolen Secrets

Published on Tuesday 12 August 2008 21:42

STOLEN SECRETS **** THE SPACE @ VENUE 45 (VENUE 45)

FOLLOWING last year's Mehndi Nights, award-winning writer Fin Kennedy has again teamed up with East London girls' comprehensive, Mulbury School. The result is an imaginatively executed and boldly conveyed urban fairytale, about the secrets behind the closed doors of a housing estate.

Kennedy's script is a delight and mixes rhyming verse with street slang in a way that is textured and truthful. It's clearly informed by the students and their experiences of the world. We meet a girl who works in her mother's 'make do and mend' shop and falls in love with a customer, an elderly lady who is not all she seems, and a girl who wants to be a boy and lives out her dreams of masculinity by becoming a taxi driver in secret, with tragic consequences.

The characters are all played by talented and versatile students from the school. While they have the presence of a professional cast, they also maintain an untutored naturalism that is refreshingly honest and unrestrained. The versatile and imaginative set is a visual jewellery box that changes and revolves – a testament to designer Kollodi's skill for simple but imaginative staging that uses pillowcases as characters, reams of fabric as walls and cardboard cut-outs as props. Indeed, this is one of the best-staged plays I have seen this year.

The stories came from the school's 'secret vault' boxes, in which students and teachers deposited their deepest, darkest secrets. There are great moments of honesty but a stronger narrative arc would push the play beyond a collection of short stories.

• Until 16 August. Today 12:10pm