A sordid, sentimental plot unwinds, with an inevitable mawkish ending.
Hirst's letters to a former girlfriend are mawkish in places, and he proves oddly unprofessional when faced with a pretty woman.
But, as a former war reporter myself, I recoil from the mawkish sentimentality with which we enshrine our casualties.
Yet there was nothing mawkish or funereal about the atmosphere at the weekend shows - rather they were a celebration of the individuality that produces imaginative talent.
Entitled Aftershock, it's a massive, mawkish adaptation of Zhang Ling's eponymous 2006 novel of the 1976 Tangshan earthquake.
But if it is messy and occasionally mawkish, "The First Grader" is rarely dull.