Alex Jarrett (Annabella) and company
(Picture: Johan Persson)Based on 656 hours of interviews with young people across the UK over five years, Alecky Blythe’s extraordinary new verbatim play shines a light on a generation dealt a spectacularly bad hand. Monstered by social media and exam pressure, their future poisoned by older generations, they lost formative late-teenage years to Covid. We hear 12 stories in Daniel Evans’s rich, gutsy production, told by a splendid ensemble, most of them young enough to remember these pressures, feel these emotions. It runs almost four hours but earns its length.
They’re a varied lot: hilariously stroppy Brummie Muslim siblings Ali and Ayesha and tough Glaswegian Robyn. There’s nerdy Thatcherite Callum and disabled athlete Taylor. Only two of them attend a private school: gauche, sweet, privileged Lucas and terse, driven Emily. The bigger personalities make an immediate impact, but the quiet anxiety of Rachelle Diedericks’s Ierum and the chaotic life of Sarita Gabony’s Mia deliver a sobering chill.
