The Rose Theatre’s production of ‘Never Let Me Go’ written by Suzanne Heathcote and directed by Christopher Haydon, and based on Kazuo Ishiguro’s award winning 2005 novel of the same title, was shown at the Rose Theatre, Kingston Upon Thames from 20th September – 12th October 2024
The sci-fi based play follows the main protagonist, Kathy from her days as a student at Hailsham school to her life as a carer, looking after organ donors and focuses on her relationship with her friends, Ruth and Tommy throughout their lives, from their school days until adulthood.
In my opinion the production worked well with the majority of the acting performances being very believable, in particular a stand-out performance from Nell Barlow who played Kathy.
Additionally, the set design was impressive as despite there being multiple settings throughout the play it was adapted cleverly to fit the different locations.
The play deviates from the book in one main way: in the play Kathy initially tells the story to one of the patients that she cares for, whereas in the book she seemingly narrates the story to herself. This was a good way of structuring the play as it felt like a more natural way to get an insight into Kathy’s retrospective feelings.
Martha Virik, who saw the play at the Rose Theatre said ‘I thought the way that Kathy’s memories of her childhood were shown on stage was very effective.’ and ‘I enjoyed it however, I thought more could’ve been done with Tommy’s character.’
However, there were some elements which I felt did not work well. For example, each scene would end with the first line of the next scene, and whilst this was an interesting idea it was very jarring at times as there would be stark contrasts in tone.
Additionally, the plot was frustrating at times as it was a very contained story with the characters just accepting the unjust world in which they live.
It was also slightly discordant when the adult actors were playing the younger versions of themselves, especially when the characters were in their early years at school.
Overall, I think this production was successful and worth a watch.
If you would like to see the play it is being shown at Malvern Theatre until 2nd November, and will then move to the Bristol Old Vic from 5th-23rd November, and finally Chichester Festival Theatre from 26th-30th November.
