Arcola Theatre, London – until 3rd February 2024
Reviewed by Celia Armand Smith
3***
Michael Hastings was just 18 when he wrote Don’t Destroy Me in 1956 – a play informed by his own fractured life in post war Britain. The story follows Sammy (Eddie Boyce), a Jewish teenager born in Hungary, raised by an aunt in Croydon, and sent to live with his drunk father (Paul Rider) and young stepmother (Nathalie Barclay) in a Brixton tenement. Surrounded by a carousel of outcasts, Sammy tries to navigate his new life in the city, and the trials tribulations of being a 15 year old boy. There is hardly any reprieve while neighbours come and go, and everyone’s lives are laid bare with people hanging on every word on the stairs and at the door.
Opposite lives George (Timothy O’Hara), a rakish and unlikeable bookie who is having an affair with Shani, Sammy’s bored stepmother. The upstairs neighbour (Alix Dunmore) is living in her own world, and her teenage daughter Suki (Nell Williams) who she refuses to acknowledge is barely clinging on, but is also somehow the most reasonable character in the whole piece. The damage inflicted on the teenager’s young lives is ever present and unshifting, simultaneously bringing them together and tearing them apart. There are laughs though, and the landlady Mrs Miller (Sue Kelvin) is a welcome relief bringing a different pace.
While the writing at times definitely feels like an 18 year old’s diary entry, Tricia Thorns’ Two’s Company production is clever and well put together. The cast are excellent, and Alex Marker’s claustrophobic set is full of smart details like the bare bones door and the record player that is never given a chance before being unplugged and moved. The young Hastings’ writing feels like a work in progress full of potential, much like the character of Sammy, and maybe that’s the point. All of these lives are so full of promise and hope, but the shadow of war and uncertainty looms large in this frenetic family drama.