One Minute at Hoxton’s Courtyard Theatre

The unexplained disappearance of a young girl is a topic that carries a lot more weight than it might have done several years ago. With Madeleine McCann still missing, and high profile kidnap cases dominating the news in recent years, the world seems a frightening place for our children.

Simon Stephens’ 2003 play One Minute is about such a disappearance. Little Daisy Schults, aged 11, has gone missing. But, that’s all we know. And until the end that’s all we ever know. There are no details about how she disappeared, what she was wearing, where she was when she vanished. Nothing. Even when her fate is revealed the details are sparse, with only the most limited of facts. And this is exactly the point of the play. Because it isn’t the details of Daisy’s disappearance that the play is concerned with, it’s the effect of her vanishing on those involved; her mother, police officers, the public, bystanders and those who saw her before she disappeared.

Where the play excels is how it structurally reflects the experience of those left behind, the extremes of emotions, the crippling lack of information, the confusion, and the truth that is never revealed. Dialogue shifts and turns, raising questions it then leaves unanswered. Scenes and sentences end unfinished, occasionally monologues tease us with the revelation of something, which is snatched away before we can access it. And the ending is challenging and subtle, leaving us without the answers we’re so desperate for.

The staging is excellent, with a unique set mimicking Canary Wharf from above – as if the intricacies of London life are evading us, and we can only look at it from a distance. It then opens up in parts converting itself to a shop, a car, a sofa, a pub, a zoo, a police station, a coffee shop and even a snooker club with seamless ease.

Charlotte Weston and Eloise Joseph do well with parts that don’t stretch or challenge, but it is the manic performance from Alice O’Connell as Marie Louise Burdett – a bystander who thinks she saw Daisy Schults being taken, but in hindsight made it up – that provides the most intense moments of the play.  She is ably supported by the two male characters, London Met officers played by Colin Tierney and Ben Crystal, who provide some of the funniest and most touching moments. Crystal in particular shows the real growth of a young officer, new to the force, faced with a difficult and challenging case. His gritty determination at the end contrasts with the bouncy enthusiasm he displays earlier.

One Minute is a neat little play. It could be a bit sharper in places, but it’s clever and simple and its effect works. So often in cases like this people focus on the person missing, but it’s those left behind whose journey can be the most challenging.

One Minute runs until September 28 at The Courtyard Theatre

40 Pitfield Street
Hoxton N1 6EU

Box office: 0870 163 0717