Mudlarks

Synopsis

On the muddy banks of the River Thames, downstream from the bright lights of London, three boys hide from the police after a night of recklessness. Over the course of the freezing night their fears, secrets and dreams emerge, collide and combust revealing the desperate frustration of lives barely led but already ravaged. Essex-born Vickie Donoghue's powerful debut exposes the culture she grew up with and sees on a daily basis. With brutal honesty she explores how the impulse to dream is futile in the context of a reality that has no space for dreamers. Mudlarks heralds the arrival of an urgent new voice in British theatre.

Our Review:

Anne Morley-Priestman - 5 May 2012

If the word “mudlarks” makes you think of perky young Cockney lads gleefully scavenging the banks of the Thames in a fashion closer to Oliver! than the grim realities which Dickens truly portrayed, then the first full-length play by Vickie Donoghue, premiered at the HighTide Festival, will jerk you out of any such fantasy. We are down-river from London, on what the locals ironically call “the beach”. This one is certainly washed by each tide, but these waves carry in and out only the detritus of 21st century society.

Part of this debris are Wayne (Mike Noble) and Charlie (James Marchant). They’re teenagers with a non-existent home-life and a not altogether successful street-life. They’re there, as we discover, because they are being chased by the police and the brothers of Charlie’s girl-friend –the former because of a prank which has developed into a tragedy, the latter out for revenge for an different act of violenc...

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