Re:group performance collective’s POV retains the poignancy and punch it had when I first saw it at Belvoir Downstairs in 2024. For one cast member on that occasion, the punch is hard enough to halt the show.

The work centres on Bub (played by young actor Mabelle Rose, in her final season in the role), an 11-year-old determined to make a documentary about her ceramic-artist mother as she prepares for an exhibition.

Armed with an expensive camera bought by her dad, Bub prises open a fraught family dynamic governed by the ups and downs of her mum’s hypermania.

But here’s the twist: Bub’s parents are played by different actors each night, who step on stage with next to no familiarity with the script. Bub acts as onstage director, guiding them through line readings and improvisations. It’s a cliff-edge walk for the performers, and not without risk. On this occasion POV derails when one of the improvising actors  – obviously experiencing deep discomfort – calls a show stop.

Mabelle Rose in POV. Photo supplied

The actor is quickly replaced by another, who performs courageously under the circumstances, but the spell is broken. Such is live theatre. Up to that point, though, POV is completely gripping, anchored by Rose, whose practised deadpan seems to actively discourage anything too performative or untruthful from her co-stars.

Directed by Solomon Thomas, POV‘s multi-layered meta-theatrics are highly effective, too (the show begins with a reading of the relevant sections of the Child Safety in Performance guidelines for young performers, which it then sticks to rigorously) and it is frequently very funny, thanks to bleakly encouraging missives apparently penned by Bub’s hero, the German filmmaker Werner Herzog.

In the end, the unpredictability of POV is its superpower, echoing the vulnerability of those experiencing mental crisis and those supporting them in real time.

POV plays at McIntyre Theatrette, Newcastle Museum, until 30 September as part of the New Annual festival.