On January 14th, 2019, I attended a play called ‘The In-Between’ written by Marcus Youssef, directed by Mike Payette and produced by Geordie Theatre. In this text, I will summarize the play and then share my appreciation of it by talking about two criteria, being the originality of the play and the set design.
The play is a reimagining of Ahmed Mohamed’s story. He was a student who brought parts of a clock to school and got arrested because people thought it was a bomb. The play was different, but still highly inspired by that story. It talked about topics like racism, friendship, islamophobia and many others. It told the tale of three high-school students and how they dealt with their differences and the new refugees that just arrived at their school. Lily, who was born in Vietnam, struggled with her two relationships; her friendship with Brit and her new-found love with Karim. She had trouble deciding between who she wanted to spend time with and that was why Lily was stuck in the ‘In-Between’.
I do not like most school plays because of how they try to tell a mundane story about teenagers that they try and make as relatable as possible and then sprinkle little bits of wisdom about things we have heard a million times before. However, this time around, it is actually pretty interesting and that is my first point, being the originality of the play. When I was watching the play, I actually wanted to know what was going to happen and I was on the edge of my seat during the interesting, despite obvious, climax. The set design, the way they tell the story, the character traits, the topics, every single one of the things are original and different from other plays.
On the other hand, despite being interesting and original, the set design is not very useful at telling us the location of the scenes. I understand that they had to make compromises for the simple fact that they travel but, it simply just is not quite right. A set is supposed to give you an idea of what is happening but, during the play, it was mostly confusing. In addition, there were screens I the background that played videos but most of the time, they felt inaccurate, like when the protagonists were clearly sitting on a bench but the video playing was one of a forest. Furthermore, even though it is not directly linked with the set design, I found the sound effects a little too loud and annoying.
In conclusion, I would give ‘The In-Between’ my rating of four out of five because besides minor gripes about the set design, this play sends a special message about how we should open ourselves to others and treat them with respect and does it quite cleverly while telling an interesting story with some social commentary.
Antoine Guérin groupe 44