The Children Playtext

Details

by Lucy Kirkwood

As recommended by Michael: "Three retired nuclear scientists meet in a cottage near the power station they all once worked at, scene of a recent disastrous radioactive leak. Rose has come to visit couple Hazel and Robin with a proposal that they all volunteer to work at the station in place of the younger staff with long lives still ahead of them. Kirkwood provocatively asks whether the 'baby boomer' generation has a moral responsibility to compensate those generations that came after, but she does so with humour and compassion that stops this from being a one-sided indictment."

'Retired people are like nuclear power stations. They like to live by the sea.' 

Two ageing nuclear scientists in an isolated cottage on the coast, as the world around them crumbles. Then an old friend arrives with a frightening request. 

Lucy Kirkwood's play The Children premiered at the Royal Court, London, in the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs on 17 November 2016, in a production directed by James Macdonald.