This debut play about a boy growing up autistic and queer has plenty of theatrical wonders. Writer JJ Green, who also plays Boy, depicts the hard realities of his character’s childhood but alongside there is a world of mermaids and starry skies that he believes in just as much. That parallel world interrupts reality with sparky humour and magic in Bronagh Lagan’s production. He can romp across the universe in his mind’s eye, Boy says, but “just don’t ask me to make eye contact”.
A-Typical Rainbow has clear signs of a talented playwright in the making whose work bursts with imagination and whimsy. It is warm and childlike but also full of pain and eccentricity. The play has a similarly flowing forward motion to Naoki Higashida’s The Reason I Jump and gives great insights into the interior life of an autistic person (there is a passing reference to Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time too).
The dreamlike interludes and flights of fantasy are deftly done, as the cast float around with glowing lights and masks (choreography by William Spencer). While depicting loneliness and the social stigma around autism, it shows that seeing the world in this glorious Technicolor is also a gift and the luminous framing of Frankie Gerrard’s set, along with the video design by Matt Powell, takes us into other realms.
Repeated skits about being on a train or airplane, with transport announcements reflecting Green’s emotional state, are especially cute although they also slow down the story and a few less repetitions would magnify the play’s power. Some of the later scenes when Green has joined the circus and had his first serious boyfriend (Conor Joseph) feel too short.
Still, this play has sparks of brilliance and Green is a lovely, guileless performer. The scenes with his father (James Westphal), an army man who disapproves of his son’s mermaid doll and is disappointed they can’t bond by a shared love of football, capture the painful tensions between them. His mother (Caroline Deverill) emerges as a heroine and the play reveals her interior life with delicacy too. “Am I weird?” he asks her. She tells him that he does not need to change in any way and that he is very loved, even if the world is bad at accommodating his difference.
At the Turbine theatre, London, until 7 August.
