Photo: Jimmy Lee

The first of this year’s ten plays specially commissioned by the National Theatre for the Connections Festival, its annual youth drama festival, is a very experimental piece. Think Alice in Wonderland meets Samuel Beckett as we range across themes including nightmares, growing up, parental expectations and the circularity of life. It’s surreally funny in places with a lot of dark humour relating to undertakers, butchers, fishmongers and the symbolism of a lost shoe. Eventually the whole cast winds itself into a cat’s cradle of green luminous tape.

These young people –  most of them accomplished and conscientious – have clearly been directed (Andrew Leggott and Lisa Debney) to speak naturalistically and they do. The trouble is that for inexperienced actors in a space like the Dorfman it means that their projection is often weak. I was very glad of Stagetext’s captions at the side. The play itself is, moreover, too long and would have been better 15 minutes shorter.