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The Review - THEATRE by HOWARD LOXTON
Published: 30 August 2007

The unspoken rules of gender behaviour

MA VIE EN ROSE
Young Vic

YOUNG Ludo prefers skirts to trousers and plays games with the girls, but it’s not until he turns up at a party wearing mother’s favourite red frock that anyone worries.
Then he gets caught playing at weddings and kissing the boy next door. But don’t jump to conclusions.
This isn’t a play about being gay or coming out: Ludo is only seven, and it is much more about adult attitudes to sexuality that his. Think back to your own childhood; was gender important to you when you were little? Unlike Ludo, I wanted to be Prince Charming rather than the Sleeping Beauty but I do remember marrying my teddy bear to a cuddly rabbit called Peter.
This opening play of the Young Vic’s new season is a community venture. The professional cast are joined by 40 people drawn from Lambeth and Southwark in a devised performance that does without words to tell a story taken the 1997 award-winning film.
Without dialogue it presents a situation rather than argues a case – though what case is there for particular dress?
Like most parents I suspect Ludo’s just say ‘You’re a boy, boys do this!’
But it doesn’t need dialogue to present innocent infant playfulness, the gender conditioning of playground games or children’s sudden amoral selfishness.
Adrian da Costa, making his professional debut, is a delightfully giggly Ludo and a cast that ranges from 10 to 55 do a good job of suggesting they are children as well as playing their parents – though I wasn’t sure whether a group of girls were being boys or just supposed to be pretending.
The relationship between Ludo and best friend Jerome (Ian Bonar) is beautifully captured but, although they are skilfully playing infants, the actors’ adult bodies give their behaviour a sexual dimension that makes you realise how readily we read a sexual connotation into everything, however innocent, and also suggests a parallel scenario if they were adolescents and possible future orientation.
This is a touching and frequently funny 90 minutes (no interval) made up of a series of episodes following a simple story line, all held together by a ravishing score from composer Gary Yershon.
Run complete

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