The Domino Effect

It is not every school that can boast a writer-in-residence, especially not if it is an all-girls comprehensive from an impoverished borough of London. But the Mulberry School for Girls is no ordinary institution. Their 2009 production, The Unravelling, won a Fringe First Award – the first state school ever to do so. And their writer in residence is theatrical hotshot Finn Kennedy, the co-artistic director of Tamasha Theatre Company.

For the want of a nail a kingdom was lost, or at least so goes the old adage, but what of the other way round? Can the discovery of something small, something tiny —a domino piece, for example—cause a crippled butcher to find music, an alcoholic to find a job, a silent child to find a family? This is the restorative vision of The Domino Effect, a modern fairy tale as rooted in the streets of Tower Hamlets as is its young cast.

The idealism of the form, the hope of a happily ever after, that all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well, is peculiarly affecting as realised through Finn Kennedy's exquisite writing and the acting of a very youthful cast of non-professionals. The delivery of lines never falters, intricate choreography is carried out with grace. And while one never loses sight of the fact that the young actresses are an amateur troupe, it is moving to see them work together in such perfect harmony and trust.