A trippy look at first-time parenthood

I read Nina Segal’s script for in “In the Night Time” in a mad, streaming rush, coffee on fingertips on pages in the dregs of whisky and sleep. It deserved every one of my 5am minutes, and more.

“At this very moment, the universe itself is leaving us behind. Receding.

Walking away and

not even waving goodbye...”

It’s a play in the sense that “The Odyssey” could have a script. Coming away from the performance, the words, still, are largest on stage. Actors are mannequins, but Segal’s work grips them tight, the helpless carriers for her ideas that they are.

“Perhaps, in a play crying out at a world that is hard and loud and vast and brittle and more, just more, than we could ever hope to know or understand”

That’s the point.

Director Ben Kidd has been brave enough to work subtly here and let the script do the talking. His focus is on the minimalism of the staging – including the eerie neon glow of the ‘precious child’ (or a plastic doll with broken legs). Chaos spills across the stage in the wink of a dog and a lion with a thorn in it’s paw. Like all good children’s stories, the grown-up jokes are in the sidelines, but the play leaps for them.

It suffers only in that the pitch is hard to maintain. Once the tide’s in and the big bad world has burst through the window how do you stop it pouring out? At points the play verges on manic – and that’s undoubtedly the point – but the audience is, maybe, drowned just a hint too quickly to register the full force of the flood.

Gate has pulled out the stops on this – some of the most thought provoking theatre I’ve seen in a while. And c’mon IC – it’s on your doorstep for £7.50. What more could you want?

If you’re particularly keen, check out my interview with director Ben Kidd in last week’s FELIX_._

In the Night Time is at the Gate Theatre until the 27th of February