MOSQUITOES (National Theatre)***

 

By Cal

Link: https://www.ntathome.com/mosquitoes/videos/mosquitoes-full-play

Available until: Unknown

Mosquitoes focuses partly on the difference between intelligent people and stupid people and having tried unsuccessfully to grapple with the scientific parts of the play, it’s very clear which camp I fall into.

I read other reviews in order to make sense of this play and I’m still a bit lost. One of the main characters, Alice, is a scientist and she’s working on an experiment involving two protons colliding. Her emotional collisions with her less intellectual sister Jenny seem to provide some sort of parallel, but wouldn’t they be more like electrons colliding? It seems fair to say these sisters are negatively-charged.

This play makes me feel like I’m not good enough intellectually, but this actually helps me to relate to the play as a lot of it seems to be about whether the characters are good enough or clever enough. Karen, the mother of Jenny and Alice, feels she was denied something she felt she deserved due to the unfortunate fact of her being a woman (or perhaps the unfortunate fact of being called Karen and the negative connotations it brings?). She doesn’t doubt her abilities, but the people with the power did. Alice clearly has high intellectual abilities, but Karen feels Alice is hardly on her level. Jenny is not an intellectual and is treated as the stupid one who is left out of all the clever jokes and is lambasted for her decisions, which tend to be based on emotions and compulsions rather than logic (if only we could all be logical in a crisis…). Alice’s son Luke has intellectual ability, but he’s struggling to negotiate the challenges of adolescence and social media.

Lucy Kirkwood’s play could be categorised as a domestic/science play – but it’s nothing to do with cookery. There are scenes where a scientist gives lectures on particles, protons and the many ways in which the world could end. This seems to be set up to echo what is going on in the domestic part of the play, which consists of disagreements between Jenny, Alice, Karen, Luke, Alice’s boyfriend, Luke’s potential girlfriend and any other character unfortunate enough to come into contact with them. There is also comedy in the play. It is biting, sharp and painful, like the mosquitoes in the title… but it’s still funny.

Director Rufus Norris has put his production in the round and it makes the characters seem extra vulnerable, always surrounded and visible from all sides. Katrina Lindsay’s set appears basic but is extremely versatile, with furniture popping up from the floor and incredible scientific visual effects, with lighting design by Paule Constable and video designs by Finn Ross and Ian William Galloway.

The characters aren’t completely awful. It is possible to sympathise with all of them as they face their own personal limits and find themselves lacking. But it does seem a bit unfair to see Jenny as the one who creates dramas… it really does seem to be a family trait!

One thing that really bothers me about this play is the criticism of Jenny for not giving her child the MMR vaccine because she believed, wrongly, that it can cause autism. A lot of people genuinely did and still do believe those claims and did not get their child vaccinated (I’m sure we’re all very well aware at the moment of the level of mistrust where vaccines are concerned). I actually have no idea whether I was vaccinated or not (though I strongly doubt it), but my adoptive mum didn’t receive the vaccine. She’s never had measles.

Since 2016, incidences of measles have increased due to a reduction in the numbers of parents choosing to inoculate their babies, but most cases of measles do not cause death and do not even require hospital treatment.

Jenny made the wrong decision, but more crucially, she was desperately, heart-wrenchingly unlucky. Her unvaccinated daughter Amy – a baby she’d longed for - did catch measles and die. This play seems to support the idea that this is Jenny’s fault, but this seems unfair. Many people are concerned about the risks and doctors don’t always take the time to give adequate reassurance, often telling people to look online, as Jenny did (and it’s also not unknown for doctors to give information which is incorrect). Jenny was also not Amy’s only parent and the chances of Amy’s contracting measles and dying would not have been high.

But most of all, it is a tragedy and not a moment to point the finger of blame. Jenny did what we all do. She made a decision without having all the necessary information. Alice does exactly the same with her experiments, which she can’t say with honesty are entirely without risk.

Olivia Colman and Olivia Williams are brilliant as Jenny and Alice. They deliver every nuance of a very complex relationship and they never hold back on their characters’ failings, yet they do win sympathy for them. It’s fascinating to watch the struggle between them and impossible to predict where it will lead.

Joseph Quinn gives a great performance as Luke, a shy and awkward teenager with just one friend – Sofia Barclay’s confident, streetwise Natalie. Yoli Fuller is lovely as Henri (who really has to put up with a lot) and Amanda Boxer’s performance as Karen is both touching and terrifying as she struggles to cope with her increasing limitations of mind and body, without ever losing sight of her position as Jenny and Alice’s highly intelligent mother.

The title is supposed to refer to the protons Alice knows so much about, and that the effect of two of them clashing together is like two tiny mosquitoes. But I felt that, in addition, the characters were like mosquitoes, biting at each other constantly, causing pain and suffering. Mosquitoes, so apparently small and insignificant. Mosquitoes, whose bites can destroy a human being.