Theatre review: These big kids make very little impact

Director: Three Birds is directed by Sarah Frankcom who casts much older actors in the parts

Odd casting at the Bush Theatre which has a play — an award-winning play, no less — about three children in south London.
They are aged 16, 13 and nine, and their mother has left them. A bad smell arises from their poky flat’s bathroom, whose door is shut most of the time.
Something bad seems to be happening. The children (two sisters, one brother) are being pestered by a 30-something man who appears to be a drug dealer.
The little girl’s teacher, Ms Jenkins, makes a visit and the youngsters manage to persuade her that nothing is wrong. If this was played by children it might work.
We would see the vulnerability of little ones pretending to be tougher than they actually are.
Yet director Sarah Frankcom casts actors who are much older. Tanika, 9, is played by a burly lass (Susan Wokoma) who is almost as big as Ms Jenkins (Claire Brown).
The boy, Tionne (Jahvel Hall) looks more like 16 than 13, but that does not matter so much. The oldest child, Tiana, is played by Michaela Coel who could easily pass for 30.
Without the dramatic impact of youth being tested and its innocence shockingly lost, the play struggles.  The opening scenes are so rushed it is confusing.
There is odd stuff about cutting the neck off a plucked chicken. The characters take exaggerated offence at each other.
The arrival of the mother’s  foul-tongued suitor, who has the name Dr Feelgood (Lee Oakes), only takes the strangeness to a different, coarser level.
Playwright Janice Okoh, late on, observes that teachers are now part of the State snooping system. This point is rather more interesting and believable than the rest ,.