Edinburgh International Festival 8th-31st August 2008

'Beautiful, haunting, exasperating, drenched in sadness, but also with a sweetness, and an ache for lost dreams of love, that breaks the heart'

- The Scotsman on 365 at Festival 08

‘a fascinating patchwork of raw experience transformed into an elegant and at times heartbreaking theatrical poem of low-key empathy and beauty'.

- The Herald on 365 at Festival 08

The much-anticipated new drama from the National Theatre of Scotland tells the stories of a cohort of youngsters leaving institutional care. We follow them as they move into the supported environment of ‘practise flats' and take their first steps out into the world.

With a range of story arcs - from tragic downward spiral to positive and uplifting - each member of the audience will have their favourite moments. There is humour as two brothers talk to each other through a door, anger as a girl confronts her mother and gentle poignancy in an exchange between a tall, awkward young man, struggling with his new freedom and a young girl who has run away from her care-home.

However the multiple narratives become much more than an unconnected series of case studies as 365 weaves together a tapestry of this particular set of young lives and asks us all, public and politicians, the question, are we doing this right?

- 365 review by EIF Critic, Jon Davey

365 presents the stories of young people emerging from care. Vulnerable, awkward, witty, abrasive, violent, angry and abandoned- each character struggles to adapt to their bitter reality.
 
If [writer] David Harrower's Blackbird examined in depth the complex relationship between abuser and abused- and even dared to question such a clear distinction- 365 lacks such dramatic focus in its presentation of a vast tableaux of characters. But if it occasionally lacks depth of characterisation - almost all of these character portraits could be expanded to fill a play of their own - it succeeds in presenting the vast array of social problems facing these disenfranchised youth. Harrower captures adroitly the simultaneous assuredness and vulnerability of youth.
 
Vicky Featherstone's production reflects the absurd sense of dislocation these characters experience. A particularly touching 'fantasy' scene, choreographed by the excellent Steven Hoggett, presents the physical comforting these youths have yearned for, as each meet in an awkward embrace.
 
Make no mistake, this is political theatre angry for social change - but in a society where the gap between rich and poor is at Victorian levels, perhaps this is the sort of challenging, imaginative polemic we need. 
 

- 365 review by EIF Critic Fraser Riddell