Baby Girl, DNA, The Miracle
Guardian4 STARS As before the National has plucked three new plays from its excellent Connections season for young people and professionally restaged them. The result, in Paul Miller’s deft production with video design by Simon Daw, is a diverse evening that offers disturbing evidence about adolescent life while displaying the vitality of a new generation of young performers. The shocking thing about Roy Williams' Baby Girl is that it argues that there is a cyclical pattern to teenage pregnancy. Williams paints a rivetingly plausible picture of a world in which mothers and daughters are sexual rivals, ”virgin” is the ultimate peer insult and the school gates are a fertile hunting ground for male predators. The piece is unnervingly honest yet filled with William’s own irrepressible buoyancy. Dennis Kelly’s DNA takes us into slightly more familiar territory: the enclosed world of adolescent cruelty, famously captured in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. He absolutely understands the dynamics of group panic and creates a memorable character in the mastermind’s sidekick, played by Ruby Bentall as an unstoppable chatterbox. Bentall crops up again to great effect in Lin Coghlan’s The Miracle. The play resembles a pocket-sized Saint Joan in which a visionary heroine finds herself battling authority. Like George Bernard Shaw, Coghlan suggests a miracle is simply an event that creates faith and shows that human progress often depends on the irrational. 1/3/08, Michael Billington -------------------------- Metro
4 STARS The target audience for this trio of plays, performed by a crack team of young professional actors, is teenagers – but they should lure adults to the National too. Of the three shows, Dennis Kelly’s sinister and baroquely funny DNA is the hot ticket. It sees a gang of teenagers who think they have killed a boy embark on a fiendishly clever cover-up masterminded by Phil (Sam Crane), a rivetingly impassive criminal genius with a devotion to junk food, especially waffles. DNA uncovers layers of moral unease beyond the reach of many plays for grown ups. It rebuffs the notion that children are innocent, while exploring the complexity of group dynamics. There is some wonderfully spot-on acting in Paul Miller’s production: Ruby Bentall delivers a stand out performance that is effortless, subtle and hysterical as Lea, a brainy, elfin nerd who talks incessantly. The other two plays are eager to charm – and do. Lin Coghlan’s The Miracle is about a girl who seemingly acquires supernatural powers. Roy William’s Baby Girl follows 13-year-old Kelle, who gets pregnant. The script has terrific bounce and also hints at the sweetness and fear underneath teenagers’ macho posturing. 3/3/08, Maxie Szalwinska -------------------------- Telegraph Every year the National Theatre stages its Connections programme… this trio are the pick of the crop of the last two years and they are now performed by professional actors in a punchy production by Paul Miller. Easily the best play is Roy William’s Baby Girl about a sweet teenage schoolgirl who get pregnant at the age of 13 by a boy of the same age. Williams presents a disconcertingly persuasive account of black kids, meticulously researched right down to the latest street language. Dennis Kelly’s DNA is an initially disturbing piece, in which a group of kids hound and bully a schoolboy to what appears to be his death… an intriguing play. Lin Coghlan’s The Miracle made me smile. A 12-year old girl (played with lovely solemnity by Ruby Bentall, who also shines in DNA) discovers she has acquired healing powers after a plaster saint mysteriously appears in her bedroom. She starts transforming the lives of those she encounters for the better, in scenes that prove both comic and touching. 1/3/08, Charles Spencer -------------------------- The Times
3 STARS Roy William’s Baby Girl is a play that brings a mainly black community alive, relishing its slang and the resilience of its women, if not of the main man… the ending is warm but satisfying. [In Dennis Kelly’s DNA] there are lovely performances from Ruby Bentall, a ditzy-seeming chatterbox with a basically good mind and heart, and Sam Crane, her sinister chum, an adolescent Svengali who uses silence as weapon. Bentall also excels in Lin Coghlan’s The Miracle, where she plays a girl with gifts of healing that adults try to suppress and peers mock. Nice to see a play that takes otherworldliness seriously. And here, as elsewhere, very nice to see young people who may well be tomorrow’s ace actors. 3/3/08, Benedict Nightingale -------------------------- Time Out
4 STARS, Critics Choice These three plays were written initially for the New Connections programme and are intended for young people. In Williams’ snappily written piece [Baby Girl], he bravely ventures into the world of teenage pregnancy and unsurprisingly shows how it tends to run in families. The school world is equally brutal in [Dennis Kelly’s] DNA although the students are older with brighter prospects until their ‘Lord of the Flies’-style bullying of Adam goes just a little far. It’s Ruby Bentall who most impresses as Phil’s garrulous friend Lea in DNA as she does Lin Coghlan’s The Miracle as a modern-day St Bernadette. It’s a more reassuring play for adults in that it gives an optimistic account of a girl with miraculous powers who, despite the best efforts of parents and teachers, manages to help a whole variety of people who have come adrift from their roots. 3/3/08, Jane Edwardes -------------------------- Evening Standard
3 STARS Vibrant, insightful and often hilarious. First up is Roy Williams’ Baby Girl, a frank and funny look at under-age pregnancy. Williams gets behind the headlines to discover a world of street-smart youngsters deficient in the facts of life. Next is Dennis Kelly’s DNA, a suburban Lord of the Flies informed by present day child murder. Kelly’s play has some magnificent speeches and genuinely suspenseful moments, and is very good on the power-politics of the playground. Finally, Lin Coghlan’s The Miracle is a sweet tale in which a young girl gets mystic powers enabling her to heal dyslexia, heartbreak and incipient criminality. All three are directed with a pacy, confident hand by Paul Miller, and given a contemporary edge by designs that effectively deploy video images. There are potential stars among the young ensemble. Ruby Bentall is quite simply brilliant in pivotal roles in the latter two plays, but Claire Lams also shines in less showy supporting parts. Lucky teenagers. Theatre wasn’t like this when I was a lad. 3/3/08, Nick Curtis -------------------------- Whatsonstage.com
4 STARS From pregnancy to death, the highlights of New Connections 2007 reveal truths about teenage life that shock us into laughter and out again. Like indie film Juno, Roy Williams’ Baby Girl proves that teenage pregnancy can be funny too. In a great, predominantly teenage cast, Candassaie Liburd shines as a quirkily heroic Kelle. With staccato dialogue, looping monologues and a pervasive sense of menace, Dennis Kelly’s DNA is Grange Hill for the Skins generation. Paul Miller, director of all three plays, manages the ensemble scenes with such skill that every relationship shift is seen, every nuance clear. 29/02/08, Triona Adams -------------------------- Independent
Baby Girl (3 STARS), DNA (4 STARS), The Miracle (3 STARS) The National Theatre is reaching out to the teen generation with three hour-long plays that home in on key moments in the transition to adulthood. The best thing about them is that they are punchy without being preachy; they tackle moral issues without moralising. First commissioned by the NT’s Connections programme, they are here presented with bite and bounce by young actors in sharp productions by Paul Miller that revel in the stylistic individuality of each piece. Roy Williams’ Baby Girl manages to be both funny and concerned about the pressures put on the young by a sexualised society. In DNA, Dennis Kelly offers a balefully witty take on the dark side of group mentality. Roby Bentall is wonderfully funny as Lea, who can’t stop rabbiting on about life and the universe in a double act with the silent Phil (splendid Sam Crane). Bentall makes another strong impression as Veronica…in Lin Coghlan’s play The Miracle. The strange story gives inspiring impression to the idea that we should never close our minds to visions beyond the ordinary. 4/3/08, Paul Taylor
Please note: Most performances do not feature all 3 plays. For details of which plays are performed on each date, see the listings on the main Baby Girl, DNA, The Miracle page.
Baby Girl, DNA, The Miracle finished on: 10 April 2008
