Theatre

Bola Agbaje’s first play, first seen Upstairs at the Royal Court, has plenty of mouth and plenty of attitude. Set among a group of youts on a south London estate, it’s a comic – sometimes farcical – series of face-offs, pumped up by intra-racial conflicts and the anxiety and bravado of being a teenager. First up are brothers Yemi
(a cocky 16-year-old homegrown Londoner) and Ikudayisi (his 18-year-old Yoruba-speaking older brother who has recently shown up from Nigeria). In scene one they fail, hilariously, to keep up the body-poppingly humiliating punishment moves their mother has set them to do. So she sends them out to buy a pint of milk instead, cueing a series of charged encounters (with a Muslim shopkeeper their racially mixed-up peers and the police) in which hoodie Yemi (Tobi Bakare) demands respect while Ikudayisi (Tunji Lucas) is the peacemaking innocent abroad.

Bijan Sheibani’s production has a hyped up physical and visual language which suggests a slightly down-at-heel, keepin’-it-real music video. In slo-mo sequences between the scenes, the protagonists close down on each other and sinuously gyrate or square up, giving body to the aggressive sexual and social energies which burst out of the slang-flecked, swinging script. The acting is bang on. Zawe Ashton is unbearably convincing as loose-cannon Armani, the mixed-up, mixed-race, ponytail-swinging wannabe rudegirl whose bad attitude and loose mouth create the needless (and potentially tragic) showdown. And Bakare finds moments of introspection and dignity in Yemi before he goes too far defending his brother. Agbaje’s play overworks its issues, and the back-to-back conflicts in the short scenes give it a choppy feel. But it remains a sparky, hugely promising and entertaining all-rounder.