‘You tell us to grow up.” On a simple set of scraping chairs, children perform to an audience of adults. In direct address, they roll through the instructions, truths and lies that parents and guardians feed them, each sentence a variation on “You tell us …”
First performed in Belgium in 2007, the script has been workshopped again with a new cast of 8-14-year-olds, supervised by renowned befuddlers Tim Etchells and Forced Entertainment. Some of the text remains the same, as wisdom and idiocy often do, while additions root it in today’s world. Collectively, the cast detail the orders they are given each morning, the warnings doled out at night and the facts they are taught each day.
They quickly reach limits: of logic (“You tell us that centipedes have 100 legs but for some unknown reason millipedes do not have a million legs”); of what adults can answer (“You try to explain loneliness and the internet”); and of what they’re afraid to ask (“You wonder if we’re having sex”). Deliberate gaps occur as adults skip through stories of 9/11 and Syria, of news and guns and modern monsters.
Rich in their representation of race and language, the cast reflect the divisions fuelled by Brexit. Parental prejudices, meanwhile, come to the fore; the shouts and swearwords sound alarming when they come from the mouths of the youngest on stage. It’s a reminder that your language influences others, insults as much as the alphabet.
Performed in a straight line, a chorus fades to an individual voice and back again. The stillness is punctuated by two boys who perform in British Sign Language, with captions on a screen above. It’s a delightful education to watch them sign a starfish, a cyborg and Nigel Farage. The script is mesmeric and the performative naturalism endlessly watchable.
Forced Entertainment is now 34, a company old enough to have children of its own. “You tell us an actor is a parrot speaking words they cannot understand,” the children say. They point to themselves but the words redirect, heading towards the adults in the audience, who continue to recite the version of the script they used to hear at home.
At Southbank Centre, London, until 15 December.
