«Tuổi Thơ Dữ Dội» (A Fierce Childhood) Play

   Boys of thirteen and fourteen sign up for the reconnaissance unit of the Tran Cao Van regiment in 1946. They carry despatches, scout positions and cross the front line — and not all of them come back.

   The play is staged from the novel of the same name by Phung Quan. He began writing beside West Lake in 1968 and finished in a grass hut in the middle of Tinh Tam lake in 1986 — eighteen years for one book, first published in 1988. It runs to eight parts, set in Hue and the resistance zone, and became one of the most widely read Vietnamese accounts of childhood in wartime.

   The production holds to what the novel refuses to soften: these are children — mischievous, hungry, frightened — who simply grew up in different circumstances.

   This is the kind of work the Youth Theatre does best: a large young cast, brisk pacing, everyday speech. It carries a 6+ rating, but if you are bringing a child, it is worth telling them in advance that the story does not end gently.

   One performance is on sale: Saturday, 31 October, at 20:00.

   The performance is in Vietnamese; much of it is carried by action and by the young cast rather than by dialogue alone.