The Hand-Me-Down People

There’s something suspiciously familiar about New Theatre’s tale of growing old and awaiting the inevitable. On a dusty shelf in a children’s playroom, a collection of discarded figurines immerse themselves in memories and stories, gloomily waiting for the day when they will either be rescued or thrown away. Already there’s a whiff of Toy Story about it.

This new piece by Adam H Wells essentially covers much of the same ground. His forlorn toy characters feast on nostalgia, a delicacy that the piece seems to protest is no longer tasted. The children who once adored them are now fixated on video games, leaving the abandoned toys to bicker among themselves and contemplate the end.

There is something quietly mournful about the replacing of the old with the shiny, computerised new, but Wells’ writing lacks the nuance to unpack any new insight. Instead, cliché is given a few amusing facelifts and metaphorical resonances are glaringly signposted. Committed performances from the cast pick up some of the script’s slack, but their efforts are not enough to produce more than a few weak laughs.

While there are a couple of potentially powerful truths in the toys’ purgatorial state, it is hard to shake the feeling that we have been here before. As one weary character recognises, “you can’t play the same tunes all the time; they get old.” It’s an observation this piece might have done well to heed.