A sincere exploration of young people’s realities within an overcomplicated frame
Company Three is an Islington-based youth theatre company led by members aged 11–19. The company creates performances centred on young people’s experiences and perspectives, developed through year-long collaborations between its youth members and professional artists. Unfinished Business, Company Three’s newest show, premiered at New Diorama Theatre in London. It was co-created by Company Three and Associate Director Mariana Aristizábal Pardo, who also wrote and directed the production.
The show is built around a familiar premise: What can we learn about our present reality through the lens of an unfamiliar future? Unfinished Business is set in the year 2100, when almost everything has moved into the virtual world and people rarely venture outside. Through relics (books), a group of teenagers in 2100 discover the struggles, relationships and choices of teenagers from our own time.
The show then unfolds through a series of vignettes exploring friendship, family, kinship, and other realities young people face. These scenes are a joy to watch. Each is written with sincerity and a distinct voice. They employ different modes of storytelling, yet all of them speak truthfully to the situations they explore. The ensemble’s performance is also impressively confident and natural, while each performer brings their own unique energy and personality to the stage.
However, compared with the strength of these individual vignettes, the show’s overarching futuristic framework struggles to live up to its promise. Considerable time is spent establishing the world of 2100. Nevertheless, this elaborate set-up increases the audience’s cognitive burden while making the relationships between the future characters feel less immediate and relatable. It is also difficult not to question whether this framing is necessary to the show’s central exploration of choice and ownership.
Audiences were given the power to alter the characters’ choices in each vignettes, yet those choices seem to affect only their immediate circumstances. The story does not show how those choices significantly change the characters. More importantly, it is not convincing enough that the stories discovered in the book have an impact on the teenagers living in 2100. The premise suggests that encountering these lives from the past might transform how the future characters understand themselves. However, as the connection between the two worlds remains underdeveloped, it is questionable whether lessons from the current human relationships can be applied directly to 2100, where people don’t seem to interact with others as much anymore.
Unfinished Business is an exciting showcase of young talent and it offers a genuine exploration of the concerns occupying teenagers today. Its greatest strength lies in the sincerity and individuality of its young voices. As a theatre piece, however, its storytelling could be tighter, and a different premise might better serve the story it actually offers.
Unfinished Business has finished its run in London from 25th-29th August at New Diorama Theatre.