All Fall Away
Latchmere Theatre, London

Stuart Simpson

'Tis the season to be jolly...unless you're a single mother about to be thrown out on your ear by an evil landlord. All Fall Away is the kind of Christmas story Kafka must have read as a child. It isn't just that Samantha and her son are poor, and poor at Christmas: it is their positively inhuman life that sends a shiver down your spine.

Samantha lives alone with her mute son in a New York slum. Her six-year-old son is literally inhuman. He is a wooden boy, manipulated in a confident matter-of-fact way by a six-foot puppeteer, who is worth mentioning if only for the fact he manages not to dominate the small stage at the Latchmere.

The puppet is no gimmick. The only person Samantha has a personal relationship with is made of wood. If this were a mere metaphor, it world seem a little tired. But there is something moving in watching Samantha's most intimate and private relationship, but hearing only Samantha's voice.

All Fall Away on one level is a play about a poor working mother trying to make her way in the world, but what makes this theatre is the unsettling depiction of a woman who is deprived of any intimate human contact. 'If a person isn't touched they begin to wither away', Samantha remarks.

Where All Fall Away fails is when we begin to dig a little deeper. We are told that this a contemporary Christmas Carol. In a way this is true, but Bob Cratchit was surrounded by a loving family, Scrooge was the oddity who needed to learn about human relationships. This time Samantha (Bob) is in a much harsher world, where to be alone is the rule.

So why is our world so much more cruel than that of Dickens? At this point All Fall Away falls back on cliché. For a start we are not given a contemporary setting. Samantha lives in a world where she waits in a 'reservoir' to be selected for an evenings work as a typist. Her landlord comes knocking at the door to demand two and a half weeks rent. A turkey dinner is a luxury.

Yes, 1930s America was a harsh place. It this were a play about 1930s America I may have been interested. All Fall Away has a contemporary theme, but rests on the no longer present hardships of the past as explanation. How odd. How disappointing.