King Hamlin begins with a teenager’s funeral. We learn of the boy’s stabbing as his friends sit chatting and making condolence cards for his mother. It is clear from this scene, and its lack of surprise, that this is how boys die on this neglected London estate.
“There’s too much slashing in this hood,” we are told, and Gloria Williams’s play looks at youth gang violence from the perspective of the boys at risk of being drawn in. Boys is the operative word here: the drama’s central characters, Hamlin (Harris Cain), Quinn (Inaam Barwani) and Nic (Andrew Evans), are more boys than men despite the knives and the posturing.
