AT the end of the month Chaika Theatre is staging British playwright Lucy Kirkwood’s work, “The Children”, at ACT Hub. 

Chaika is named after Russian dramatist, Anton Chekhov’s first famous play, “The Seagull” (Chaika) and is the brainchild of theatre artist Karen Vickery, who says of her company’s philosophy: “I’m interested in really good writing – not all plays that we see really fit in that category.

“I love great roles for actors. I am an actor, and although I do a lot of other things, I like to work on great texts that are exciting and simple.”

Kirkwood’s 2016 play is all of that, unsurprising from one of the hottest theatrical talents in the UK, who wrote and starred in her first play “Grady Hot Potato” in 2005 and hasn’t looked back.

Her 2022 play “Rapture” concerns mistrust of the UK government following the 2020 pandemic and this year it was announced Kirkwood would write a new musical adaptation of Roald Dahl’s “The Witches” for London’s National Theatre.

Vickery won’t be directing “The Children”. That falls to Tony Knight, her colleague from her days at the National Institute of Dramatic Art, and Canberra director Sophie Benassi, assisted by Belinda Henderson. 

With echoes of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear explosion in Japan, “The Children” concerns two retired nuclear physicists, married to each other – Hazel (Vickery) and Robin (Michael Sparks) who live in a remote cottage while a disaster unfolds at the power station where they used to work.

They are visited by another nuclear physicist, Rose (Lainie Hart) but why has she come?

“Like Shakespeare and Chekhov, the characters express themselves but there are no goodies and baddies,” Vickery says. 

“It’s a situation that is very poignant, a natural disaster which asks the question of what we should do for the greater good and to what extent we have responsibility.”

“This is such a good play for older actors, as it’s written by a young writer who is writing about middle-aged characters, but in a wonderful, affectionate way that is quite bold.” 

“But it asks questions through personal relationships between two women and a man, teasing out what those relationships actually are.”

Vickery says the characters test each other; they are forced together and they have to make a decision. At first we’ll think it’s purely personal and not about a broader issue, she thinks. Two of them make a firm decision, and the third one, well, you’re not quite sure – Kirkwood knows how to write an ending, she says.

Sounds heavy? Well, not at all. Chaika is billing the play as “a riotous reunion in which humour and drama oscillate”.

Vickery is more circumspect, saying: “It’s a good example of a play that expresses humanism in a way that sheds new light, it’s a combination of comedy and tragedy – life is like that, and sometimes we have them both at once.”

In her day job where she does simulations for medical students, she recently had to play the part of somebody who had to receive bad news.

“I found myself laughing,” she says. “We do things like that in an unexpected way – I like plays that allow us to look at that.” 

There’ll be a pared back visual look to the production, which will allow focus to fall on the script.

But, she adds mysteriously: “There is unexpected delight in this play – there will be dancing.”

“The Children”, ACT Hub, Kingston, August 31-September 9.