at the Audrey
Longman Studio, Brentwood Theatre
16.09.2014
Everyone
enjoys hearing tales out of school – from Greyfriars
to Grange
Hill,
not to mention those all-seeing flies on the classroom wall.
Terry
Burns' terrific one-man show has an impressively authentic ring. It
follows naïve NQT Michael England, thrown in at the deep end trying
to teach English to Year 11 Set 5 in “Landfill” Comprehensive.
The
characters we meet are inspired by real-life staff and students from
Burns' own time at the chalk-face.
In
a brilliant
tour-de-force, he takes us to Cougher's Corner, where colleagues
share banter and a break-time fag. Key
players in the story are John Cooper, the loud-mouthed bully who's
Michael's
mentor, shy Simone, who reads Yeats and idolizes her teacher, Wayne,
rapper, boxer and troublemaker, and Parveet, troubled
poet
and class swot, who, like
Posner in History Boys,
sits at the back and takes notes, and whose rise to literary fame
gives the piece its shape. There's
even time to meet Michael's middle-class parents.
These
very recognizable
characters are beautifully realised in
Clara
Onyemere's
economical production –
Cooper,
addicted
to pickled eggs,
is genuinely scary, appallingly unpleasant. Simone is touchingly
emotional, Wayne is revealed as much more than his dickhead
reputation – his rap is a highlight of the show.
Perhaps
the “no smoke without fire” crisis is predictable, and plays out
slightly improbably, but by that time we're so involved with
mild-mannered Mr England and his inner-city class of “muppets”
that we're more than happy to go along with it. Many questions are
left unanswered, loose ends untied, but the dénouement, when it
comes, is both unexpected and profoundly moving.
