If There Is I Haven't Found It Yet

Synopsis

Surviving school as a fat kid is tough enough. When your Mum’s a teacher, it’s hell. What’s more, Anna’s Dad is obsessed with saving the world and her maverick uncle Terry is dossing on the couch. When Anna hits back at the bullies, she finds herself suspended from school and stuck at home with hapless Terry trying to save her. But Terry needs saving himself, and as the bond between the two deepens, Anna finds herself swept up in a friendship she can't live without.

Our Review:

Michael Coveney - 26 October 2009

If there is a strictly more promising new play than Nick Payne’s at the Bush this year, I haven’t found it yet, though there have been plays with pithier and more sensible titles.

There is a slight sense of assembling the elements: fat girl is being bullied at the school where her mother teaches while dad, a college lecturer, is thinking of writing a book after watching the New Orleans floods on television.

But Payne keeps things funny and fresh, and the acting in Josie Rourke’s smart and snappy production is a total delight, with Ailish O'Connor’s lumpen adolescent Anna, nursing a nosebleed after a netball fight and facing up to Pandora Colin’s peace-making Fiona, her mother, who is drifting apart from her work-obsessed, ludicrously “green” husband.

This George is played by Michael Begley in the curious donnish voice of the literary critic John Carey, falling down on his “r”s and tripping over his own silly ideas – like joining the family holiday in America...

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Latest User Review

rds - 15 November 2009:

Ingeniously staged, but an underdeveloped plot left me feeling ultimately unsatisfied. I rather liked George, played by Michael Begley, and thought he the better of the two male characters, Rafe Spall's ultra showy performance as his brother, Terry, gave me the impression he was off on one of his own? The daughter, Anna played by Ailish O'Connor, however was excellent and utterly convincing. Not a bad effort from this young writer and no doubt not his last either and yet further proof, if need be, that The Bush gives the Royal Court a run for its money as the leading production house for new writers. ...

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