Mucky Kid review, Theatre 503

The story of Mary Bell, the 10-year-old child who killed children, left as great a mark on earlier generations as the more recent case of Jon Venables and Robert Thompson who murdered 2-year-old James Bulger. Sam Potter's first play, Mucky Kid, draws on both cases, but its concentration on a teenage girl killer who escapes prison for a weekend in which she discovers alcohol and dancing and sex, bends towards speculation around a similar episode involving Bell in the late 1970s.

In Mucky Kid, Mae is a complex young woman for whom the truth constantly shifts. As a result we can never be sure whether, during her break out, she befriends a child because she still sees herself as ten-years-old, because she wants to atone for past sins by showing kindness, or because she still harbours a killer's instinct. Can Mae ever come to terms with what she did, when everything about her that is decent recoils in shame at the very memory?  Like Bell, Mae has been the victim of child abuse, but of the many thousands of children we now know have been heinously abused by adults, no others have become murderers. How can we ever trust her?

Potter's play deals cleverly with the complexity of the girl and a stunning central performance by Sonya Cassidy, currently in BBC One's The Paradise, carries us through difficult, virtually simultaneous, imaginings of alternative truths. A terrific support cast, led by Pamela Dwyer, Rob Witcomb and Adam Loxley play a number of cameo roles with panache.

In conclusion: Mucky Kid is a tough and intense 75 minutes. There is a little sag in the middle with one imagining too many, but it's an impressive first play by Potter whose reputation has previously been as a director, and the rally in the last minutes provides insight and a sense of completion.

References
Theatre 503, Tickets


Theatre 503, 503 Battersea Park Road, London SW11 3BW.