My queasiness about the subject of a mother and son imprisoned by a psychotic abuser kept me from reading Emma Donoghue’s 2010 novel or seeing the recent film: I feared they would stir memories of the real-life cases of Elisabeth Fritzl and Natascha Kampusch. But Donoghue has now adapted her book for the stage and the result, with added songs by Cora Bissett and Kathryn Joseph, is a strangely moving work about the power of imagination and the pain of adjustment to a new reality.
The first half shows Ma and her five-year-old son, Jack, adopting survival tactics to deal with their lengthy confinement. They live by strict rules, construct daily rituals, play games and tell stories: for obvious reasons Alice in Wonderland, with its underground adventures, is a special favourite. The horror of their situation is brought home, however, by the periodic visits of their captor, Old Nick, whom Jack espies from the wardrobe where he sleeps. In the second half, the story shifts to the world beyond the room and the manifold terrors that await Ma and Jack when they confront their newfound liberation.
Donoghue shrewdly gives the story an extra dimension by putting on stage the figure of Big Jack who voices the inner thoughts of his younger self: sometimes very potently as when he reflects on the strangeness of a world glimpsed only through TV where “houses are like lots of rooms stuck together”. Although the songs are occasionally intrusive, at their best they arise naturally from the situation: in the midst of her nocturnal abuse by Old Nick, Ma physically detaches herself from the action to reflect: “I am not inside myself, I am watching someone else.” But ultimately the strength of the play lies in its metaphorical resonance.
In the first half, with its references to Mandela on Robben Island and the Count of Monte Cristo, we are reminded of the human capacity to cope with captivity through a mixture of self-discipline and imaginative release. Once the story takes us into the world beyond, I was struck by the comparison with The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time in that Jack is perplexed by the sights and sounds of urban life. Like many people who have suffered under dictatorial regimes, Jack and Ma even find themselves confused by the multiple possibilities of freedom.
Bissett’s production, which tours to Dundee Rep and Dublin’s Abbey theatre, is ingenious without being self-advertising and Lily Arnold’s set swirls and revolves, allowing us to see the nightmarish invasion of Old Nick from Jack’s point of view. But what comes across most strongly is the bond between Witney White as the resilient Ma and Harrison Wilding, who is one of three young actors playing Little Jack: both outstandingly evoke the tenacity of love in enforced isolation. Fela Lufadeju also captures admirably Big Jack’s sense of being a spectator of his own life. I found the prospect of the play intimidating. In the end, I was deeply touched by its testament to human resourcefulness.
- At Theatre Royal Stratford East until 3 June. Box office: 020-8354 0310. Then at Dundee Rep, 13-17 June, and Abbey theatre, Dublin, 24 June-22 July.
