What would it take for a parent to sacrifice their own child? In Infant, parents Cooper and Lilly give up their four year old for an unnamed crime to the authorities, ostensibly to save their own skin. Writer Oliver Lansley stretches believability past snapping point in this full length, post 9/11 play about the terror of ideas. Certainly, any Fox News watcher would say that psychological manipulation is child's play in the hands of bully pulpit hosts like Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity who channel their ideological mandate with the help of agenda framing devices such as the 'War on Terror'. But a parent giving up their own flesh and blood? It would have to be something incredible.Set appropriately in the vaulted cellars of St. Mary's Abbey with stark, exposed brick and hard wooden benches, Infant begins with the entrance of a hooded man accompanied by two operatives of some civil liberty-less, Patriot Act state. We work for a higher power says one. The prisoner, Cooper (Steve Cash) has no idea why he has been abducted and neither do we. Castogan (Daffyd O'Shea) and Samedi (Noel O'Shea) pepper him with questions, offer him tea and threaten him in a Clockwork Orange redolent style. Eventually they show him a photo of a child's drawing. We never see what it contains, only hear a description of a man, an umbrella or possibly a tree and...something else. Whatever it is it represents a serious threat to national security. We have reason to believe that someone is planning something says Samedi. With a swift change in lighting to indicate time passing, the father is now convinced, that his son the 'Infant' is a terrorist. (Isn't an infant less than one year old?) The operatives soon realize that the father had nothing to do with the drawing and let him go. But now that his son is in danger, he stays to find out what will happen to his son. The mother is brought in and questioned and then set against the husband. Eventually they figure their interrogator's tricks and unite in innocence. This leaves the child as the sole author of this dangerous drawing convincing the interrogators that the parents are themselves responsible with the reasoning that only a real terrorist would sacrifice their own child. They are released but we know a certain fate awaits them. The ending, which the audience did not realize occurred until a techie in the booth prompted us with a clap, is a recording of an interview with the child on what the drawing contains. He doesn't tell us.The problem with this piece is not the central question. Actually it's a very good one. What would it take to convince a parent to commit such an act? Anything is possible in the world of theatre as long as the argument is cogent enough. The problem is how Mr. Lansley implements his dramatic devices. The series of dramatic questions placed in the mind of the audience never deepen and the scenes, in turn, never develop the plays themes, leaving a thin drama without depth. The dramatic questions are roughly as follows as the piece plays out (they would change slightly in each individual):1)Why did the interrogators capture the man and bring him here?2)Who is that captured man?3)What is in the drawing? 4)What is in it that is so threatening?5)What is it in the drawing that convinces the father that his own son is a threat to national security?6)What will happen to the parents?7)What will happen to the child?Some of these questions are answered through reveals and others are hidden, with the likely idea to maintain tension. What is key is how these questions are dealt with. Drama typically uses these hooks in the audience mind to surprise them, reverse expectations, cause them to identify with the subject matter or character, and essentially deepen their interest in the play so as to make the themes reverberate and expand well past curtain.Mr. Lansley does not do this sufficiently; instead the dramatic questions continue without say, deepening ideas, complicating the action or twisting the plot for example. It is akin to a relay race, we end one question and are prompted with another, but it is the same race, the same thing happening, running on a flat surface. Each question is essentially no different than the previous. The result is repetition. Each scene, despite having different action, is quite similar to the previous with no change to the basic stem question; what will happen? What we are left with is a one act play extended to ninety minutes. The audience stops caring around the 45 minute mark because the questions are not strong enough to compel us to care. We have no reason to believe that the drawing presents real danger because we are not given any. Unlike the characters in the play, who are shown what is in the drawing, we need to be shown something and I don't mean the drawing.At one point Mr. Lansley even appears to be self-parodying his own work, when, late in the play, a toy gun and a Lego building are presented as evidence. The parents recognize them as toys and so do we. Since we are unconvinced of the drawing, the toys become an inside joke.The performers persevere bravely, bringing plenty of energy and enthusiasm especially the two O'Shea's who bring a fun and sometimes affectionate relationship to the stage, working well off each other. But because the play doesn't deepen, neither do they, restricting them to a limited range with the audience robbed of their potential power. Even the characters object often and early to the thin drama. Says Catogan It seems hard to believe.
