Chalk Farm @ Underbelly Cowgate

Set to the backdrop of the 2011 London riots, Chalk Farm is a two-hander piece by Kieran Hurley and AJ Taudevin, in collaboration with Thick Skin. It focuses on the increasingly strained relationship between teenager Jamie (Thomas Dennis) and his mother Maggie (Julia Taudevin) as she fights to give him a good life and he finds himself caught up in the buzz of a city gone rogue.

Kieran Hurley has established himself as a fierce new voice in Scottish writing over the past few years at the Fringe, so it’s somewhat jarring to see him focus on a London-centric event. While the intent is evident and execution generally good, the much-needed sense of place is lacking. The London constructed by Hurley and Taudevin feels sketchy, as if it could be anywhere in the world, and detrimental to the exploration of an event where geographical context is key.

Impressive video projections perched on a number of columns create several striking moments, including the stand-out scene where Jamie’s guilty face is plastered across them all. Indeed, this moment ends up being more expressive and telling than most of the dialogue, which isn’t a good sign when your work is primarily spoken word.

Both performers are strong, particularly Dennis’s naïve desperation to move from boy to man as he clutches his Batman lunchbox then gleefully recounts his involvement in rioting a supermarket. The mother-son monologues weave together somewhat erratically and often with a little too much direction. The central message of Chalk Farm is one of empathy, one that loathes snap judgements of situations by people who will never understand him, but while this message is often eloquently and powerfully expressed, it feels somewhat lacking. In the end, this doesn’t feel like Hurley and Taudevin’s story to tell.