Review: Morning, Traverse Theatre, Cambridge Street

PSYCHOLOGY is a fairly modern concept, but it has been embraced by theatre as a way of justifying characters’ actions and giving substance to the plot. Even in everyday life, everything must have a reason or purpose so that we can analyse it and react 
appropriately. **

In Simon Stephens’ dark coming-of-age play, two teenagers are bound together by a horrific crime that comes out of nowhere.

Themes of grief, sex and love are present but none are particularly prevalent. The climax seems to happen so early on that the play loses momentum, tenuously built up again by an instrumental piece and a monologue about the futility of hope, which is where the play ends.

The concept underpinning the piece is clever, but the play itself seems to be blindly feeling its way through ideas, rather than grasping and shaping them.

Nothing is dealt with or resolved, not even an ambiguous ending is offered, it simply finishes. Our inquisitive psychoanalytical minds are left to figure the rest out.

Ends August 19