Based on real-life events and interviews with children in care, Cassie and the Lights tells the poignant story of 16 year old Cassie forced to look after her young siblings when their mother abandons them at a bowling alley when she is supposedly off buying them slushies. Written and directed by Alex Howarth, it is currently showing at Southwark Playhouse.
This tender heartbreaking play asks the question, “Can kids be parents?” Cassie has to decide between her own possible future in entering into a career in animation or keeping her family together. Should she let her sisters’ foster parents adopt her sisters and create a new family? They shop in Waitrose not Asda. Materially they can provide for her sisters and provide them with a future.
Cassie (Alex Brain) is in an impossible situation, having to decide what is best for her young siblings and the need she has to keep her family together. Mily McGylnn as Kit and Helen Chong as Tin give convincing and endearing performances as the young children as they play out an imaginary innocent world oblivious to what has really happened.
Alex Brain’s Cassie represents that teenager that is old beyond her years, forced to play the role as mother, who does her best to shelter her younger siblings from the reality that their mother has abandoned them.
Cassie and the lights runs at Southwark Playhouse from 3 – 20 APR 2024. To book visit this link.
