Parallel Lines at Theatr Hafren, Newtown, Powys

4/5

“NOTHING happened,” explains Simon to his wife.

Suspended from his job as a secondary school teacher while an investigation takes place into a possibly unsuitable relationship suggested in the diary of Steph, a 15-year-old student, he overflows with genuine innocence and incomprehension.

The progress of that investigation provides the timeline for Katherine Chandler’s brilliant script in Dirty Protest’s outstanding production, with Catherine Paskell’s taut direction drawing universally excellent performances from the four-strong cast.

Simon (Gareth Pierce) is a caring and committed teacher who has recognised Steph’s potential (Lowri Palfrey).

She is a bright student from an impoverished and chaotic single-parent home. He has given her friendly help and support and she has responded.

His belief that she is definite university material has boosted her ambitions and her confidence.

But has his friendship gone too far?

In 90 gripping minutes, this intense play alternates between Steph and Simon’s homes, exploring the central characters’ responses to the unfolding process.

Steph, a calm and emotionally mature girl, must cope with her promiscuous and alcoholic, if caring, mother, Melissa (Jan Anderson), who simply wants no trouble. Simon finds his wife Julia (Sara Lloyd-Gregory), increasingly questioning his innocence and common sense.

The developing tension, enhanced by a subtle sound track, is eventually broken when Steph learns the result of a meeting of the investigating team that Melissa attended without her.

Her mother has told the team that the relationship was a fabrication and the investigation has been dropped.

The devastating effect of this news on Steph is revealed in a remarkably moving, delicately choreographed non-naturalistic scene.

In slow motion, she symbolically mutilates her hands, arms and chest. Then, desperately, she destroys a book.

Heavy symbolism, but it is hugely poignant.

In a flashback, in Simon’s room after school, he’s flattered by Steph’s mildly flirtatious behaviour and briefly, marginally, oversteps the line.

Realising this, he insists that he must: “I have a wife,” he pleads and leaves. It is this abandonment which sets in train the events which tragically affect four lives.

Parallel Lines lays bare the nature of the power relationship between teachers and their young adult students.

Dedicated teachers who form good relationships with their students must frequently live with these huge inherent risks.

Their commitment to their students, particularly the brighter and the needier ones, can so easily lead both parties disastrously astray.

Sadly, in this case, nothing didn’t happen.