AMATEUR THEATRE REVIEW: The Chrysalids - Underground Venues Studio, Buxton.

The studio attached to Buxton Opera House is the idea festival venue, seating around people with a reasonable performance area and full theatre facilities. The production of ‘The Chrysalids’ by REC Youth Theatre’s Senior Company was very much a studio presentation with no sound effects, almost no music and just a couple of benches and a small table for staging. With just a black backcloth, the atmosphere was dependent upon the acting and this young cast went a long way to bringing over the tense post-apocalyptical world of John Wyndham’s novel.

The notion of a future world after some major calamity where an elite are intolerant of those not deemed worthy appears in many sci-fi orientated tales from ‘Judge Dredd’ to ‘Dune’ to ‘Logan’s Run’ but ‘The Chrysalids’ was published in 1955 making it something of a trailblazer. The story of course has echoes of racism and elitism, making it as relevant to today as in Wyndham’s day.

Unlike his more famous work, ‘The Day Of The Triffids’, the emphasis in ‘The Chrysalids’ is on youth although some doubling was required in playing adults. This worked with varied success, with the distinction between youth and adult characters on occasion denoted just by a hat, but the story was nevertheless clearly told. The large cast of eleven enabled several convincing group scenes, interestingly interspersed with several soliloquies. This was perhaps inevitable in needing to tell a story with several overlapping issues in the course of fifty minutes.

The performance started with the cast largely drowned by the opening music - although first night nerves seemed to account for the actors largely speaking quietly. As the play developed, the cast visibly grew in confidence and there were frequently strong interplays as relationships became frayed in the post-apocalypse world, where imperfect human specimens were banished to the ‘fringes’ whilst bonds developed amongst a group of individuals with a shared special gift. The play looked at life from the perspective of the wider society down to the parent/child relationship as both romances and friendships developed against the odds.

This was a thought-provoking play and a good choice for a youth theatre company to take on. There were several strong performances, most notably from Elyse Marling as the six-toed Sophie. REC Youth Theatre delivered a good performance of quite a challenging play, with plenty of emotion and drama.

Reviewer - John Waterhouse
on - 17.7.22