Teenage dreams are pure poetry: QUENTIN LETTS says I And You with Maisie Williams from Game of Thrones is a touching tale of adolescence

By Quentin Letts for the Daily Mail 09:47 26 Oct 2018, updated 09:58 26 Oct 2018

I And You (Hampstead Theatre)

Rating: ****

Two young actors make their stage debuts in a charming and touching play, but that's not the full story.

One of the performers, 21-year-old Maisie Williams, has already had big success on screen, not least with Game Of Thrones. Yet here she is at the gallant Hampstead, earning her theatre spurs. Good for her. The show is well worth catching and she fizzes with stage presence.

Lauren Gunderson's I And You is on one level a fluent, chatty, distinctly American teenagers' tale. Caroline and Anthony are both 17. Caroline (Miss Williams) has liver disease and is now confined to her home bedroom, a large, untidy room where all the action occurs. Through its skylight we can see a big moon and occasional falling snow.

The arrival of Anthony (Zach Wyatt) in the opening moment is a surprise to Caroline, who presumes he must be an intruder. Anthony explains that he is in her class at school and they have to co-operate on an English project about the poet Walt Whitman.

The first part of the 90-minute evening consists of sardonic Caroline slowly dropping her suspicion of the bookish, handsome Anthony.

During the second half she starts to relish Whitman's poetry and things take a more significant turn which is hard to describe without spoiling the show.

At Wednesday's final preview, Miss Williams's clarity needed some tiny improvement, but director Edward Hall will no doubt rectify that.

There may be occasional moments in the early stages when you wonder if the play will ever escape the shallows. But let me plead with you to stay the course. The conclusion brings a coup de theatre in plot and staging. I was left in a bit of a blur, its closing moments having whacked me emotionally.

Williams and Wyatt are well matched and establish a sweet chemistry, she giving Caroline a cheeky energy — at moments I was reminded of Sheridan Smith — and he establishing just the right air of professorial geekiness of some earnest teenage boys.

Caroline's potentially fatal liver disease makes her an unusual classmate. 'Don't be nice to me,' she snarls, 'it makes me want to break glass. Nice is fake.'

She admits that she is like a dachshund in that she suffers from 'small-dog rage'.

Despite the shadow of Caroline's illness, and the related story of a boy at their school who dies on the basketball court, the two bubble with all the ambition and optimism of youth.

The show is suffused not with the bleakness that you might expect, but with a strong sense of potential and promise.

They dream of visits to big cities, of riding in taxis, of standing on a Manhattan terrace and watching the city's glittering lights.

Will Caroline ever get to savour such heady experiences? And will Anthony?

Parents of teenage children may find this a bit of a gulper, but I recommend it most heartily.

PATRICK MARMION: Little scamps need a smaller stage

The Midnight Gang (Festival Theatre, Chichester)

Rating: ***

Verdict: Slim plot, sturdy characters 

Plot is not David Walliams's strong suit, but usually, he charms with his characters. Bryony Lavery's stage adaptation of his 2016 children's story, set in a dysfunctional hospital, is a case in point.

In a long first half our hero, Tom, is admitted to hospital with an egg-sized lump on his head from a cricket ball.

Barring a brisk, imaginary trip to Antarctica, the main event is a 90-year-old lady flying naked over London.

What Lavery bottles best are Walliams's characters. His children in the titular gang — who break out of hospital for nocturnal larks — include a would-be female explorer, a blind boy who longs to conduct orchestras, a lad who wants to fly and Tom, who's been abandoned by his parents. 

Most affecting is Anjali Shah as a girl who seems to be having chemotherapy and gets the one tear-jerking tune in Joe Stilgoe's jaunty score as she pines for school: 'Everything's exciting when you've got no place to go.'

The adults, meanwhile, are a hearty set of Walliams-ish caricatures. Jennie Dale plays a saucily domineering matron reminiscent of Roald Dahl's Miss Trunchbull. Marilyn Cutts plays the flying Granny who thinks she's six. And Tim Mahendran is Tom's old-fashioned, cane-flexing headmaster.

Lucy Vandi is almost pantomimish as a soul-singing dinner lady. And, in a nicely sentimental touch, the show's saviour turns out to be Dickon Gough's kindly hunchbacked porter, who aids and abets the kids in their adventures.

Dale Rooks's direction strives to fill the capacious stage with Simon Higlett's set, with its gothic masonry and hydraulic platform bringing up the basement and glass atrium.

Stilgoe's score is more cheerful than memorable, padding out the story rather than amplifying it.

None of which means the show isn't thoroughly likeable. Just that it might have been better, scaled down and served up on a smaller stage.

DAVID GILLARD: You'll have a ball with this Cinders

Cinderella (Glyndebourne Tour)

Rating: ****

Verdict: Cinders with bite

There's magic in the air as the Glyndebourne Tour (the festival's egalitarian, talent-spotting offspring) celebrates its 50th birthday with a provocative production of this rarely performed fairy tale opera.

Massenet's mellifluous score is a sugar-coated, chocolate-box confection of the lilting and the lyrical. But director Fiona Shaw ensures a harder bite with an absorbing, gender-bending, psycho-drama where fantasies and realities collide.

Nicky Gillibrand's costumes add a contemporary resonance (the wicked stepmother and ugly sisters are cigarette-puffing, selfie-taking chavs) while designer Jon Bausor's revolving glass towers cleverly mirror and reflect Shaw's deceptive and elusive stagecraft.

Massenet was in love with the female voice, and the opera is dominated by women. Even Prince Charming is a mezzo-soprano in a trouser role (though he ends up in a skirt).

And there are superbly sung portrayals here, notably from Alix Le Saux as Cinderella, Eleonore Pancrazi as her puzzled Prince, Caroline Wettergreen fearlessly flying her coloratura hurdles as the Fairy Godmother and, hilariously strutting her stuff in a basque, Agnes Zwierko as the bonkers, shopaholic stepmum. William Dazeley is best of the men as Cinderella's much put-upon Dad. The dancers are terrific, too.

The Tour (and a three-opera repertoire) will be at its Sussex base until November 3 before hitting the road. For details, see glyndebourne.com