Reviews for One Minute
Reviews
****
Simon Stephens has been enjoying incredible acclaim recently and this is a revival of his play One Minute, first performed in Sheffield in 2003. The initiative behind the venture is Shining Man, comprising director Robert Wolstenholme and producer Ben Crystal, set up with the aim of staging the first major revivals of lesser-known modern classics. This challenging debut does not disappoint.
The play is a five-hander and the action, set over eleven months in 2001, is built around the sudden disappearance of 11-year-old Daisy Schults from the heart of London. The police search is on to find her and as we are introduced to them one by one, we realise the play’s five protagonists are unknowingly, yet inextricably linked by this desperate race against time
Stephens’ characters are gritty and real, sharing a sense of displacement. Where Daisy is literally lost, these people are struggling to make sense of their own lives. Each actor gives a heartfelt and believable performance, especially when given the opportunity to shine and explore with a short monologue. The speeches focus on different urban experiences, bringing particular corners of London to vivid life, relaying all the frustrations, dilemmas and emotions specific to particular slices of time. The direction is impeccable and the city almost takes on its own character as the missing child’s mother relates the crippling effects of grief as she makes her way home from work on a dark evening. The detectives in charge of the investigation struggle to deal with the frustration of a fruitless search, the stress and strain of the task impacting on their relationships as they constantly question their self-worth and realise how lonely they are. Alice O’Connell’s Marie Louise is a particular highlight. Witness to the disappearance but no longer sure what she saw, she is endearingly neurotic. With her quirky, displaced articulations and desire to return to Bloomsbury, she is reminiscent of a young Virginia Woolf.
We are constantly drawn in, forced to relate and empathise, and it is particularly through the unusual, repetitive use of monologue we really awaken to the significance of the play’s title; one minute Daisy was there, the next she was gone and the minutes tick away mercilessly towards her fate. A stunning series of intricate, one-minute snapshots into five very different London lives support the central theme and several uncomfortable, yet effective silences remind us not only of the loss of the child but of the awkward silences that so often pervade real life.
This play is not only the story of a child who has gone missing, but an intelligent study of human beings touched by a tragedy which forces them to confront themselves. Christopher Hone’s simple, effective set and Rez Safinia’s haunting, evocative score complete what is a thoroughly entertaining and thought-provoking production.
- Helen Macdonald
Shining Man’s revival of this 2003 play by Simon Stephens is timely, both because because it deals with the kidnapping of a young girl – a subject with which we’ve become all too familiar – and because Stephens has gone on to write such major pieces as ‘Harper Regan’ and ‘Pornography’ and it’s interesting to look back on an earlier work. ‘One Minute’ shares something with the latter in that once again we get a sense of London’s vast size and of lonely people briefly brushing against each other as they try to find themselves. Here the cast of five includes the child’s mother, two cops, an insecure, wealthy young woman and her far more grounded flatmate.
Some people will find this elusive play too lacking in detail; others will enjoy the emphasis on things unsaid, the passing, unexplained allusions to important events and the odd little pauses when someone goes to make a cup of coffee. Colin Tierney and Ben Crystal are excellent as the two low-tech detectives who are deeply frustrated and angered by their failure to find the abductor and director Robert Wolstenholme keeps the tension up throughout. Christopher Hone’s pod-like design neatly opens up to reveal sofas, car seats, tables and cupboards – it could well have a future as the ultimate fringe theatre set.
- Jane Edwardes
The unexplained disappearance of a young girl is a topic that carries a lot more weight than it might have done several years ago. With Madeleine McCann still missing, and high profile kidnap cases dominating the news in recent years, the world seems a frightening place for our children.
Simon Stephens’ 2003 play One Minute is about such a disappearance. Little Daisy Schults, aged 11, has gone missing. But, that’s all we know. And until the end that’s all we ever know. There are no details about how she disappeared, what she was wearing, where she was when she vanished. Nothing. Even when her fate is revealed the details are sparse, with only the most limited of facts. And this is exactly the point of the play. Because it isn’t the details of Daisy’s disappearance that the play is concerned with, it’s the effect of her vanishing on those involved; her mother, police officers, the public, bystanders and those who saw her before she disappeared.
Where the play excels is how it structurally reflects the experience of those left behind, the extremes of emotions, the crippling lack of information, the confusion, and the truth that is never revealed. Dialogue shifts and turns, raising questions it then leaves unanswered. Scenes and sentences end unfinished; occasionally monologues tease us with the revelation of something, which is snatched away before we can access it. And the ending is challenging and subtle, leaving us without the answers we’re so desperate for.
The staging is excellent, with a unique set mimicking Canary Wharf from above – as if the intricacies of London life are evading us, and we can only look at it from a distance. It then opens up in parts converting itself to a shop, a car, a sofa, a pub, a zoo, a police station, a coffee shop and even a snooker club with seamless ease.
Charlotte Weston and Eloise Joseph do well, but it is the manic performance from Alice O’Connell as Marie Louise Burdett – a bystander who thinks she saw Daisy Schults being taken, but in hindsight made it up - that provides the most intense moments of the play. She is ably supported by the two male characters, London Met officers played by Colin Tierney and Ben Crystal, who provide some of the funniest and most touching moments. Crystal in particular shows the real growth of a young officer, new to the force, faced with a difficult and challenging case. His gritty determination at the end contrasts with the bouncy enthusiasm he displays earlier.
One Minute is a neat little play, it’s clever and simple and its effect works. So often in cases like this people focus on the person missing, but it’s those left behind whose journey can be the most challenging.
- Emma Mills
Simon Stephens’ 2003 drama depicts the events that follow the disappearance and presumed abduction of an 11-year-old girl, but the child herself is something of a McGuffin. The play’s real interest lies partly in the depiction of methodical police procedure and partly in a dissection of the emotional and psychological toll on anyone even peripherally related to any ongoing investigation.
The girl’s mother, two police officers, a barmaid and a possible witness all find large and small cracks appearing in their lives, exemplified in a string of monologues in which each finds a simple walk through familiar city streets filled with inexplicable tension.
Director Robert Wolstenholme carries the play smoothly through its episodic structure and elicits strong performances from a cast led by Colin Tierney as a weary but ever professional veteran detective.