Children caught up in a dysfunctional family situation often fantasize how much better life would be if only they were running the show. In Cassie and the Lights, an engaging one-act play imported from London as part of 59E59’s annual Brits Off Broadway series, 17-year-old Cassie (Alex Brain) has no choice but to step up when her mother (unseen) goes rogue for the umpteenth time, leaving Cassie’s younger sisters–11-year-old Tin (Michaela Murphy) and 8-year-old Kit (Emily McGlynn)–in her charge indefinitely.
The girls do their best to keep their abandonment a secret–they’ve been through this drill before–lest social services step in. Young lips, though, are prone to slips. Fortunately the girls are placed in the custody of a couple (also unseen), who, from the sound of their recorded voices, appear caring and kind. Still, Cassie–protective by instinct and habit–resolves to hold onto the reins and contest a proposed adoption. Prepared to sacrifice her own educational prospects, she’s determined to remain head of the household come what may. It’s the middle child, astronomy buff Tin, who–at the somewhat mystifying outset of the show–comes up with a metaphor for the trio’s configuration: a “trinary star system” in which one star, in a “hierarchical arrangement,” keeps the other two tethered to a safe trajectory.
Initially, you’d have to be a Professor Higgins to decipher what the three performers, employing heavy East End accents, are on about. But ears adjust and the gist soon becomes clear. The emotional truths are never in question, thanks to a thoughtful script and direction by Alex Howarth (artistic director of London’s Patch of Blue company) and skillful adult actors who rise to the considerable challenge of playing credible children.
McGlynn is particularly remarkable, playing impish Kit, ever ready with the mischievous remark (she labels Cassie “dead old”) and fiercely attached to her favored transitional object, a “hat that’s a frog.” She does relinquish it briefly to an audience member, with the assurance that “I don’t have lice … anymore.”
Murphy is bright-eyed and bubbly as Tin, whose fascination for science in general and astronomy in particular is getting mildly sidelined by a burgeoning interest in boys, or rather one particular boy in her class.
And Heart (who goes by he/they) is simply phenomenal as Cassie, who burns with love for her little sisters: they’ve become, in essence, her own children. The intense affection of Cassie’s gaze is something any one of us would be lucky to absorb.
There’s one more person onstage throughout: musician Teresa Origone, who has occasional text to deliver but mostly plays and sings an intriguing, multilayered score by Imogen Mason and Ellie Mason. Given an uneven sound system (uncredited) and an impasto of competing voices, much of this material is difficult to decipher. However, the gist–a sense of displacement and longing–comes across movingly.
Cassie and the Lights opened June 17, 2023, at 59E59 and runs through July 2. Tickets and information: 59e59.org
