Casssie (Alex Brain, center) who feels responsible for her mother’s absence, cares for Kit (Emily McGlynn, left) and Tin (Michaela Murphy) right.
A foster-care placement, no matter where or when, can be a difficult, even traumatic transition for all parties involved. Much can go awry, especially when children expect that their parent or parents will return for them. Alex Howarth, writer and director of Cassie and the Lights, draws the audience almost vicariously into the fantasy-filled and emotion-and-guilt-fraught world of three sisters in foster care in northern England. Their strongest, and possibly only, tool for survival is their bond with one another.
These girls—Cassie (Alex Brain), nearly 17, Tin, for Tina (Michaela Murphy), 10, and Kit, for Kitten (Emily McGlynn), 7—ostensibly have a better shot at emotional health and a brighter future than many others. They are placed with Alice and Mark, a generous and caring childless couple who want to adopt them. A slam dunk for a good life, it would seem, but Tin’s and Kit’s obsession with their mother’s return is a major obstacle.
Kit (McGlynn, left) looks on as an anxious Tin (Murphy) worries about their future. Photographs by Carol Rosegg.
Tin: Do you think she’s here somewhere? Hiding like. ‘Cos this is the last place we saw her and now we come here every week.
Kit: For Bowling Wednesday.
Cassie: What? Tin, why would she be hiding?
Tin: Like to check on us. That we’re ok like.
Kit: And that we’re remembering to like wash our hands and breathe and love each other.
Cassie is their rock, and even though she knows that their mother will not return, she lets the girls cherish their illusion until the courts intervene to facilitate their adoption.
Cassie finally admits to Tin and Kit that their mother has abandoned them. She petitions the court for guardianship, which is denied because of Cassie’s age, finances, and educational and social needs. The girls now have their stable environment with Alice and Mark. Tin excels in science, revels at the positive feedback she receives, and is radiant about attending a prom. It is Kit who is most visibly shaken by Cassie’s revelation. She runs away at the prospect of adoption. Here Howarth has pit sibling fealty against practicality and demonstrates why maintaining a tight family unit is not always best for all members. As Cassie writes in a letter to her mother: “Maybe I’m just not enough. And if you’re not coming back—maybe they should be their mum and dad.”
The girls’ relationships are described in cosmic imagery. Tin has a monologue about three stars whose orbits and gravitational pull are aligned with one another that is really a metaphor for their “constellation” as sisters. “We found out those three stars go everywhere together, and two of the stars need the other one.” The third star, which is farther away, makes sure that neither of the other drifts too far from their orbit or pulls each other out of line. Together, they are Cassie and the Lights.
Cassie (Brain, left) braids hair for Tin (Murphy), who is all dreamy about Jake Hawkins.
Howarth, as scenic designer, has filled the stage with stacked suitcases and clutter that symbolize the haphazard and transient existence the sisters and other foster children face. The sisters’ everyday home life prior to fostering may well have consisted of living out of suitcases. The chaos of the stackables is offset by Rachel Sampley’s lighting and video design. Her multimedia solar system projections are the backdrop for Tin’s science-based monologues and a fantasy escape route to the younger girls’ illusory and short-lived joy.
The dissonant score of composers Imogen and Ellie Mason complements the surreal world to which Tin and Kit cling. Cassie and the Lights is an immersive work, one that builds the audience into the performance, even before the story begins. The sisters pass out biscuits to the audience and parade up and down the aisles and sit in them, chatting with audience members. During the performance, Kit hands a female audience member her frog hat and asks her to wear it; Tin approaches a young man (to whom she has spoken earlier) and asks him whether she and Kit should let Cassie take care of them or be adopted by Tom and Alice. The distinctly northern British syntax, pronunciation, and grammar—for example, were, instead of was—is an indicator of poverty or working-class origins, in a country where even today strong biases exist.
These interactive devices contribute to the audience’s engagement, but the production’s powerful impact is largely due to the authenticity of its actors, and the tragic, universal reality that the outcomes of foster care, no matter where they occur, are unpredictable at best.
Cassie and the Lights runs through July 2 at 59E59 Street Theatres. Evening performances are at 7:15 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturday; matinees are at 2:15 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. For tickets and more information, call (646) 892-7999 or visit 59E59.org.
Playwright, Direction, Scenic Design: Alex Howarth
Lighting and Video Design: Rachel Sampley
Music: Imogen Mason and Ellie Mason
