"When I had my first hip replacement," says a twelve year old into a tabletop microphone, "I had a party." He tells us that he had another after his second. Next to him, an eleven year old girl waxes lyrical on the importance of skin care, which has - she says - taken years off her. Beneath the conference table, her leg swings back and forth, her foot never quite reaching the floor.Fevered Sleep, widely celebrated for their work aimed at young children, have placed wise words into the mouths of babes in this devised piece performed by children. Seven fresh-faced miniatures, all aged between seven and thirteen, deliver verbatim quotations originally spoken by those at the opposite end of life. The effect is charming - at times overtipping into cutesy - but also rather disorientating. Once one settles into the piece and sees beyond the oddity of children onstage, the ageing process is presented at a distance, almost objectively. Age loses its threat, its associations of deterioration and of death and seems instead a perspective, a point from which we view (and experience) the world. It becomes a state of affairs, a fact of life. As one of the cast suggests, "they're just numbers, aren't they?"
There's a curious twofold effect to the divorcing of text spoken and speaker, which is both to equalise and emphasise. We define the cast both by their youth, in marked contrast with those on whose behalf they speak, and as people, equally likely to voice similar attitudes in future and - even now - experiencing life as once each of us has done. The children's voices, high of pitch and clumsy in rhythm, distort the words as much as those words alter our perception of the child speaker. The disjunction sits oddly and the performers become slippery, almost defying categorisation. They seem a curious mixture of immiscible characteristics: they are simultaneously wise and naive, innocent and wry.
On the one hand, the children gain a precociousness as they reminisce on lives they have not lived. Sat behind their glossy white conference table, leaning into microphones, they lecture us. They address and advise us, their elders, through baby teeth. They have a worldliness to which we feel they have no right; they know more than most of us. Somehow, they seem to be gently mocking us, like pint-sized stand-ups poking fun at the expense of their audience.
Equally and oppositely, however, the words spoken lose what authority they might have had. The textual tone is one of knowledge acquired through personal, lived experience and passed on to inexperienced others. The quotations are tips, warnings or reports from a higher vantage point. They speak of our futures with an air of "you'll see" or "just you wait." Yet, divorced from experience and age, the words of wisdom grow ridiculous. Voiced by those younger than us, less experienced, they become statements plucked from nothing. The combination is frequently amusing.
However, compared to the teenagers of Ontroerend Goed's Once and For All… or the primary schoolers of That Night Follows Day, Tim Etchells' collaboration with Victoria, Fevered Sleep's children seem more like mini-adults. That's not just down to what they say. They are too well-behaved and too measured. They seem to be following orders in order. It is when they fidget and fumble or when they crack smiles off the back of our laughter, enjoying the effects of their actions and showing off, that they really seem like children. More often they follow a script without distraction; they play only as they are instructed to play. Its a shame, because when their impulses break through, they become infinitely more interesting.
Besides, Fevered Sleep don't merely make mouthpieces of their young cast. They speak for themselves as well, as if to assert - almost proudly - their own partaking in the process being discussed. The youngest, Theo (a being whose fidgety presence gives him a constant pull on your attention), has grown 0.24 centimetres since rehearsals began. Others have lost baby teeth and bought training bras. Voices have dropped, schools have been started. On press night, perhaps every night, a tenth birthday is celebrated in front of us. This is seventy minutes that ensures you note its passing. You emerge a little older - but also a little more youthful in spirit.
I'm not convinced, however, that you leave any wiser. In presenting their thesis spun from examples, there is a breadth to Fevered Sleep's content that precludes real depth. On Ageing never really opens its subject up to discover its beating heart. Instead it is content to offer the obvious: that you're only as old as you feel, that the body buckles faster than the spirit, that ageing is living. It does so delicately and gently, reassuringly even. In fact, the tone of delivery is not dissimilar to their work for children. There's a soft directness that seems to spell things out and hold your hand. That's not to say it patronises or mollycoddles, since we there's no sense of being talked down to. Rather, I think, it draws us gently to its level, comforting and cradling us. It infantilises.
That's accompanied by a certain sentimentality, which sits at odds with the frankness of its message. While we're effectively asked to see ageing neutrally, as something that simply happens, there is a retro, vintage quality that plays on the emotions undercover. Over the course of the piece, the children flood the stage with objects: a lifetime's worth of stuff assembled like an old curiosity shop. There are clocks and Russian dolls, rugs and lamps, toys and tools. There are highchairs, plastic chairs, office chairs, cinema seats, armchairs in studious leather, armchairs in comfortable felt. There are televisions from various decades.
Essentially, On Ageing relies on these objects - though it doesn't fully admit their power. Taken together, they mark the accumulation of life in a physical manner, mirroring the ageing process of the mind and memory. What builds is an image of a life lived (one that we can all relate to - in this country at least). They also create a serene and beautiful stage picture: well-dressed children dotted in the foliage of objects on a white background. It's picture-perfect (and quite right that an audience member is asked to capture it on Polaroid). However, these objects have an individual power. They chime with us as individuals, vibrating in accordance with our own memories. That they are old-fashioned, often gorgeously retro, coats the whole thing with a quiet nostalgia. Fevered Sleep indulge us, they give us the means to muse on our previous selves and on loved ones of the past. For me, the pull was to a bunsen burner - an object I haven't seen or used for almost a decade - but one that remains familiar. Equally the porcelain knick-knacks - clowns, I think - took me back to the houses of grandmothers and great-grandmothers. For all that it wants us to accept the ageing process as is, On Ageing refuses to let us let go of personal attachments. It says one thing and does another.
All of this is, of course, overseen by a skeleton wheeled on and, later, decked in a party hat. Death is part of the party and, on the televisions dotted around the stage, waves are seen lapping against the shore. Waves swallowing waves just as generations endlessly envelope their elders. "We'll still be here tomorrow," they announce at the end. There's a barb in that - chances are, they will outlive us - but there's also hope.
Photo: Keith Pattison
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