Whistle

When Martin Figura was just nine years old, his father, having suffered a catastrophic nervous breakdown, killed his mother, ripping the little boy's world from beneath his feet. Whistle is the story of Figura's childhood, both before and after this terrible event, and about rebuilding a child's shattered life.

The production takes as its starting point Figura's poetry and sets it against a backdrop of family portraiture and history. It's an intimate look at a child's attempts to carry on growing up in the shadow of such a devastating personal trauma. Figura takes us through his childhood experiences of being fostered and abandoned by his aunt and uncle, of going into care and then being looked after by his former neighbours. The lyricism of the piece is really quite lovely and the modest staging and delivery mean Whistle is a production that never feels trite.

If there's a problem with Whistle, though, it's that it deals surprisingly little with the emotional impact of Figura losing his mother. Of course, one can imagine it was horrible; but almost nothing is said on the matter. Instead Figura deals with the matter-of-fact issues that came afterwards, which jars a little with the warm, intimate portrait he paints of family life before the event. Furthermore, we never really find out what "the event" was. It might be a voyeuristic criticism, but in such a confessional piece, detail is key. It's what makes the story personal.