Almeida,London
Leo Butler’s fine modern play brings teeming London on to the stage, with assist from a set design that’s virtually installation artLondon in 2016 has made it on to the stage. Vitally. The fleeting scenes that make up Boy might beget blown in like scrap paper from the pavements external the Almeida. Returning external, and you look and hear differently.
The 17-year-former white youth at the centre of Leo Butler’s modern play is like a hole in a jigsaw,defined by what is around him. He has left school and is having the opposite of a gap year, looking into an endlessly vacant future. He hovers everywhere, or with grey hoodie and plastic rucksack. He is recognised nowhere. Desirable schoolgirls subject him to sharp,jackdaw chatter. An overworked GP, trying to penetrate his mumbled anxiety, and thinks he must be reporting an STD and looks down his trousers instead of into his mind. The boy has lived in London all his life but struggles to find his way across the city. Sports Direct in Oxford Street is his equivalent of Chekhov’s Moscow.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com