Truckstop, Jeremy Austin - The Stage

The Zoo, Edinburgh

What a great cast the producers have pulled together for this emotionally intense tale from Dutch writer Lot Vekemans.

The two women, particularly, bring a gritty realism to their parts as a mother (Janet Bamford) and her autistic daughter Katalijne (Eugenia Caruso) and their expressly routine life running the eponymous truckstop somewhere in the Netherlands.

Adam Best is a young truck driver with a head full of ambition but without the good fortune to back it up who falls for Katalijne and threatens to disrupt their lives. It’s a good performance, but overshadowed by the other two and probably needs a little more gravitas to catch up. Having said that, the three work very well together as an ensemble.

Bamford is a very natural actress who flows through scenes giving the impression that she only lives on stage in this character.

But it is Caruso as her daughter who really impresses. Sometimes it is easy, when a character has a well-documented character trait (a strange way of describing autism, but this is a review) to fall into cliche. Caruso, of course, uses ticks and twitches to make her character’s condition easily identifiable, but brings a humanity to the role that would be lacking with less work. She is not just her disability. There is an 18-year-old girl inside and it is the constant battle between the two that drives the play.