Theatre / Saplings by Hannah Belanszky. Directed by Abbie-lee Lewis. Australian Theatre for Young People. The Q. August 22. Reviewed by ALANNA MACLEAN

Saplings is a gentle youth theatre piece that probes the experiences of a group of young indigenous people struggling with an urban society that doesn’t seem to give them much.

Insightfully developed from improvisation, it traces fragments of stories. Young blokes struggle with a lack of money and hatch doomed schemes to find some. A net drawn across the stage encloses some of them in jail. A tangle with the courts and the legalities of pleading guilty or not guilty raises questions about the fairness of the legal system.

There’s friendship and also struggle. But offsetting powerlessness is the young woman who learns to use a camera with purpose and integrity, remembering the support of a teacher.

The use of understated performance and imagery throughout is striking and powerful. The set is a series of concrete looking steps against a grey concrete wall, reminiscent of certain types of urban public architecture that don’t encourage the young human beings who meet on them. Yet at the beginning and end there are flowers blooming in one of the steps, absolutely flourishing at the end.

The cast did not quite always find the right speed and projection for The Q Theatre but the feeling and perceptiveness of the piece repeatedly came across.

And the ‘saplings’ of the title suggests hope and potential in a way that is rare in youth theatre. Despite all obstacles will these saplings thrive? Certainly youth theatre with a difference.

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