This adaptation of Jamila Gavin’s award-winning children’s novel about 18th-century foundlings plays out under an aspic glow. But beneath the handsome, period-drama optics lie ugly Georgian attitudes to poverty and dispossessed children. Orphans are sold for a shilling, babies are buried alive and desperate mothers give up their infants to a criminal posing as a philanthropist’s assistant.
But the potency of this central theme becomes buried itself under a bulging plot and inconsistent pacing. The story revolves around the landed Ashbrook family and interweaves below-stairs drama. Young Alexander Ashbrook (Louisa Binder) wants to pursue a career in music after falling in love with Handel’s compositions but is expected to take over the estate and is disinherited by his father for his disobedience. His fate is tied to the central intrigue of the criminal baby racket, led by the villainous Otis Gardiner (Samuel Oatley).
Helen Edmundson’s adaptation (first staged in 2005) also incorporates a Houdini-like evasion of the gallows, a far-fetched disguise, sex trafficking and action hinging on unlikely coincidence.
Anna Ledwich’s production feels both ponderous and rushed, albeit with beautiful live music and choral song, but the cogs of the plot turn to such an extent that it overshadows all else. Even Handel pops up, his presence under-explained, and it is only by reading the programme notes that you discover he was a governor at Thomas Coram’s Foundling Hospital.
Multiple scenarios are enacted on the spare set, designed by Simon Higlett, and there are swerves into dream-like expressionism, promisingly cutting through the naturalism. But these moments are rendered melodramatic as well with flashes of jagged light and sound.
There is one thought-provoking scene in which the criminal housekeeper, Mrs Lynch (Jo McInnes), strikes out at her superiors and claims, accusingly, that “all wealth is built on the suffering of others”, but this idea is unexplored and stranded amid the action.
As characters run on and off the stage at speed, it is not always clear which elements are real or imagined. To add to the confusion, actors also double up. The performances are strong and Binder is especially effective as young Alexander. When he reappears eight years on, the character is played by Will Antenbring. This frees Binder to play a foundling who might be linked to Alexander, but you lose the connection with the character whom Binder has carefully crafted.
There is great effort made here, but it is a convoluted production: too much story, not enough effect.
At Chichester Festival theatre until 15 June
