Review: Broken Boys at 53Two is ‘an unflinching exploration of masculinity and raw youth mental health’

Potent dialogue is such an important component of a great play and when you see a piece which delivers this, in a way that young people talk to each other, it gives you a glimpse into their lives. But more importantly, their souls.

And that is exactly the feel that Jake Talbot has created within the body of his new play Broken Boys.

Broken Boys at 53Two

If you enjoy the dog-eat-dog world of Lord of the Flies, or a group of mismatched characters meeting for detention in John Hughes’ film The Breakfast Club, you will identify some of the tropes you see here.

Five lads run a club at school called The Sad Sack Group and this new initiative has been designed to give them the space to talk.

But they choose to play football with some sellotaped Bags for Life, drink loads of brews, eat custard creams and chat shit.

Then a new boy called Harry (Sam O’Donnell) arrives and the group dynamic begins to change and some of the lads start to speak out, but not in the way that you might think.

The play then explores rivalry, and how the boys choosing to not to talk about their feelings begins to affect them, when they hit boiling point. So, what starts as a comedy featuring lads mucking about evolves into a simmering saucepan which is going to be left unattended and create drastic consequences.

Raw and adrenalin-filled performances

The performances in this raw and adrenalin-filled play are everything.

They have layers to them which are peeled back to reveal some uncomfortable truths. Paisley James’ Liam starts as the dad of this group, the leader of the pack and the only one without a nickname. But slowly but surely, he begins to unravel and when his secrets emerge, it makes complete sense.

Elliot Whitehead delivers one of those performances that makes you sit up and take notice. His character Lupo claims to not need help, but you can see the pain etched all over his face. He is a deer in the headlights and a hug from his mum would mend this broken heart, as he clutches his heart shaped necklace, longing for that moment to transpire.

Sam O’Donnell’s Harry is complex too, as he arrives with a heartbreaking back story, and we learn that not all mental health is linked to trauma.

You can experience times in your life when you feel that you don’t belong, even if you are privileged. Everyone seeks a place where they feel seen, or noticed.

Alex Rhodes as Womble brings comic relief as a Mika loving lad who is navigating dating, texting someone you like and the banter which is fired at him like a heat seeking missile by these ‘friends.’

And lastly Joshua Mason plays 50p head, a lad who is learning to live without his mum by laughing and filling his life with bants, instead of talking about how he feels.

You see beneath his forced laughter that loss marks him, like a branding iron. Each performer embodies their character and Jake Talbot’s generous writing means that no-one is left behind or short changed.

Beautiful light design from George Miller

Sometimes the slow motion and overlapping dialogue distracts you, as some cast members become inaudible. But George Miller’s lighting design illuminates the issues that the play explores beautifully.

And the play is perfectly paced as we reach the crescendo that it is the end of act one. There is one too many twists in act two and it would work just as well without one of them.

The lads use the word gay as an insult and even though I know this is how some young people speak, I would have loved a voice of dissent, or a female perspective to emerge, so that there was at least one voice challenging this. The problem for me is that if this is constantly repeated, the audience begin to laugh with it, not at it.

“an unflinching look at mental health”

That aside, what Broken Boys manages to do is to provide an unflinching look at mental health and what a young lad experiences, and how they are told to talk it out, but sometimes lack the tools how to do that.

And how the lack of openness can lead to a lack of empathy, and it also explores the notion that real men don’t talk about this because boys don’t cry.

Dare to Know are an exciting theatre company and following on from last year’s Young Love, this is another juggernaut of a play, made on a zero budget with love, passion, hard graft and authenticity from everyone involved.

Broken Boys is at 53two until 24^th August and can be booked here