Jonathan Lewis’s entertaining play, the first of a planned trilogy about education, attacks today’s obsession with exam results. A group of students, held in isolation between two A-level papers, noisily reveal their worries about parental expectations and the need to score top grades.
At its worst this anxiety prompts cheating and despair. But it’s covered up with banter, sharp-tongued bickering and brazen pranks. When teacher Mr Preston (Joe Layton) finally arrives, he’s dismayed to find that the students have been left unsupervised. Still, it turns out that his own ideas of professional duty haven’t exactly been orthodox.
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Chris Popert’s fast-moving production is rough around the edges. But there’s refreshing vigour throughout a cast that consists of eleven untrained teenagers. AJ Lewis makes a strong impression as the relentlessly obnoxious Zachir, while Christian Hines’s tightly wound JJ and Elsa Perryman Owens’s brooding Twink are more restrained.
The play, closer in tone to The Inbetweeners than The History Boys, initially seems to be a portrait of modern youth at its most tediously narcissistic. But it’s ultimately much sharper than that — and is likely to resonate with stressed teenagers while disconcerting their parents.
Until May 9 (020 7287 2875, jermynstreettheatre.co.uk)
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