Review: OUR GENERATION, National Theatre

Photo credit: Johan Persson

With not long left to go in its London run, Our Generation is currently residing in the Dorfman at the National Theatre.

This verbatim piece follows 12 children through five years of their life. Creating a vivid and truthful snapshot of reality which, for the audience, provokes a range of emotions for a range of different people...

Personally being the same age as those interviewed, it was an emotional experience seeing the truth of the last five years of your life played out in front of you. Seeing your friends, your highs, your lows; it fills you with pride. Because this isn't a hyperbolic work of fiction, this is real life exactly as it was said. For parents in the audience, they may feel empathy towards their children, being given an insight into the inner and, sometimes brutally honest, thoughts of teenagers. However, it's easy to feel that some of those in the audience are laughing at the show instead of with the show. Young people today are often overlooked, and it's easy to feel that some laughter within the audience is not as empathetic as others.

Every actor in this production is as excellent as their peers. Verbatim style requires an insanely high level of skill to naturalistically replicate each stutter, each mix up of words that a subject may have said in their interviews. Each performance is perfectly imperfect and totally believable. Standing out in this exceptional ensemble is Gavi Singh Chera as Ali who is truly captivating, along with Alex Jarret as Annabella who elicits buckets of sympathy for her tragic story.

To hold an audience's attention for the length of the average play is hard enough, but for the 3 hour and 45 minute run-time of Our Generation is exceptional. For this we must commend director and writer, Daniel Evans and Alecky Blythe respectively. 656 hours of interviews were compiled into a brilliantly flowing narrative that merges true highs with heartbreaking lows. The pace is kept up for the entire duration, with energy from the cast to match.

The design of the price is minimal. Naturalistic clothing (Kinnettia Isidore) paired with a stylised set (Vicki Mortimer) that, whilst providing a suitable backdrop for 200+ scenes, doesn't really do anything outstanding. The stars of this show are of course the children and their story. It's an amazing project 5 years in the making, and one we are glad has occurred. The last five years have been difficult on everyone (there are mentions of Trump, politics, and not least the lockdown), but to young people; teenagers, the small things seem massive and the big things seem insignificant. And no work of fiction could capture that essence more than "Our Generation" themselves.

**** Four stars

Reviewed by: Callum Wallace

Our Generation plays at the National Theatre until 9 April, before transferring to Chichester Festival Theatre’s Minerva Theatre from 22 April-14 May.