Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Cast: Charlotte Croft, Liz Crother, Linden Walcott-Burton, Nicola Blackwell.

Through the silent movement of the wind such memories of grief can be harnessed. Grief, like hate is one end of the extremes of feelings in which humanity can find themselves dwelling, grief has to be endured and it can take time, time to which other might not grant you but it must be felt to be able to move on and accept what has happened.

When a young girl’s mother is taken away from her and she is left to move in with her grandmother into the city, away from the open spaces she has come to love, the final ties with her mother seem severed, removed from her and her last present that she finds having been bought for her, a Kite, now seems as unnecessary as the wind that drives it on.

The Wrong Crowd’s use of silent movement, of personifying the wind as an entity in such a way that it breathed with a guiding force through the story, was such that it captured the beauty in nature’s twist and cold bitter blow with belief, of passing that conviction across to the audience with a sense of wonder and the relief that a wind can bring when the heated atmosphere becomes too much. It was in the silent movement created by Linden Walcott-Burton and Nicola Blackwell that stirred the imagination and the smile of seeing such delicate interaction was real and wholesome.

To measure grief without the aid of words is challenging, perhaps even cruel, it never seems to allow the actor the time to reflect with honesty the feelings that we need to experience in which to become whole once more; yet in The Wrong Crowd’s Kite, the silence of pain, of resisting change and the devastation of internal anger as life must move forward is perfectly framed by the whole cast. Instead of focusing on the verbal clash and the venting of despair. Kite shows the hardship involved in suffering with grief as one that at times just never has the right words to aid the healing process, a feat of endeavour which must be applauded.

A dramatic hour in which the simplicity of the tale, especially for the children in the audience to whom the idea of passing on is impossible to gauge for the best, was greeted enthusiastically and with care; a piece of theatre that was comfortable and charming.

Ian D. Hall