This was an interesting one to get into to start with, since there's rather a lot of "street" language used (and while I can understand and mimic accents I hear most of the time, I find reading dialect and slang a little harder to get my head round) and the duality of the time settings was a bit tricky to follow at first (though again, it's something that would have been far more evident from watching the play than from reading it).
The story arc wasn't quite what I was expecting though, and the punch at the end came as a pretty harsh blow. Actually possibly one which could have benefitted from being mentioned on the back, for potential trigger reasons, but then that'd give away the twist...
Difficult to know how to deal with that. On the one hand, it's possible that some of the audience might not be prepared to deal with the theme when out for an evening of theatre. But the entire point of having it in there to begin with is to make the audience deal with it, to go through the process, with Candice, of accepting what happened, and standing up and saying something about it. There's certainly potential for a really knockout performance, in spite of the play being quite short. It's aimed at kids, and I'm honestly not sure if that makes it better, or worse.
The interaction between the two timeframes, specifically the way it's only Sam and Candice who can see and hear each other across the gap, is very clever (if, again, a little confusing at first when reading. I'm sure this is yet another point which would become moot to see it performed)
All in all, it's an interesting insight into the times of each setting, and the story which plays out works very well within the concept of the play. It's inventive and well done.
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