Boys on the Verge of Tears by Sam Grabiner. Soho Theatre, 21 Dean Street, London W1D to 18 May 2024.

5✩✩✩✩✩ Review: William Russell.

“Challenging, unmissable, exciting, dazzlingly directed and performed.”

A superb cast of five bring this first play about young men and boys facing up to pretty well everything by Sam Grabiner to thrilling life, Set in a gents public toilet we see an endless stream of visitors – schoolboys playing hookey, vandals messing it up, queens attending a randy party arriving in full drag, a missed up man who gets beaten up, a father persuading his young son to use the toilet for the first time – surviving what life brings them. Directed by James Macdonald, the play which won the Verity Bargate Award, makes funny, heart rending viewing and is as exciting a first play as one has seen in a very long time. The actors perform some 50 roles beautifully – the speed with which the transformations from queen to hooligan, schoolboy to someone taking drugs and so one occur is dazzling – and Macdonald made what is in a way a series of sketches – or in lesser hands could be – fuse into a near perfect whole with a satisfying and surprising ending that brings things full circle. It starts with a father out with his wife and son for a day in the park waiting while the little boy copes with using the lavatory for the first time alone shut in a cubicle and refusing to let Daddy lend a hand. He wants Mummy. Then the series of other users arrive. There is a terrific set by Ashley Martin-Davis and the installations do get used – we see quite a lot usually not exposed on stage simply because that is how it would be in reality rather than as usually happens there to shock. Naked men have become a commonplace event. Here the motivation for exposure is different. Natural functions are performed with one particularly moving scene in which a step father with a colostomy has to retreat to his cubicle while his step son waits outside, is required to help, learns more than he wishes about sex and his mother, and ends up with the colostomy bag to dispose of. That was not easy to watch but worth it, while the drag queens descending – there is a particularly splendid peacock lady – prove gloriously matter of fact blokes indulging their other selves and fleeing briefly from a riotous off stage party to renew their lipstick and somehow or other use the facilities. Equally hard to watch is the scene with the young man beaten up who insists he is in fancy dress for the party and it is not blood on his vest who eventually collapses. An extraordinary, exciting, challenging piece of theatre for which for once the word unmissable is deserved.

Cast

Matthew Beard, David Carlyle, Calvin Demba, Tom Espiner, Maanuv Thiara.

The small boy – Edward Butler, Callum Knowelden, Ayden Manh at different performances.

Creatives

Director – James Macdonald.

Set & Costume Designer – Ashley Martin-Davis.

Lighting Designer – Peter Mumford.

Sound Designer – Ian Dickinson.

Costume Supervisor – Zoe Thomas-Webb.

Intimacy & Fight Co-ordinator – Enric Ortuno.

Wigs, hair & Makeup – Becky Rungen.