Laurel Waghorn, Lucy Alexander, Elliot Martin, Mark Tims, Harvey Cole and Declan Mason.
Never before have I started a review with a production’s full cast list, but the names of these six incredibly talented young actors, from the amazing Hungry Wolf Visionary Youth Theatre Company, deserve to be where they rightfully belong, right at the very top!
Since it’s inception in 2013, the Hungry Wolf company have been producing thought provoking, relevant, challenging and, above all, outstanding pieces of theatre and this year’s production, A Little Respect, firmly ticks all of those boxes and takes this already fantastic company to even greater heights.
As the piece opens we see Charley (Laurel Waghorn) and Will (Mark Tims) launching their anti bullying campaign and trying desperately to entice their fellow students to sign up to their mentoring and counselling scheme. After some hefty persuasion from Charley, and a realisation that, at some time or another they had all been victims of Ali (Harvey Cole) the school bully, Daniel (Elliott Martin), Dawn (Lucy Alexander) and Jordan (Declan Mason) all decide to sign up.
As usual with David Jackson’s writing for Hungry Wolf, the pace of the show is breakneck and the one-liners come thick and fast, and although the language is occasionally ripe, as we are looking at, and listening to, a group of teenagers, it all seems very natural and, without it’s stark and gritty edge, the play would lose so much of it’s reality.
This is not just your average tale of the bully and the bullied, this is an intricate weave of plot and sub-plot where bully becomes victim and the technology, that so often these days is used for cyber-bullying, turns victim to aggressor and helps the silent find a voice. Subjects that are, all too often, seen as taboo, like mental health problems, drug use, homophobia and even blackmail are addressed so well that the audience sit, from start to finish, transfixed as this superb piece of theatre unfolds before our eyes.
There are a few reasons why the production works so well with the first being the fact that the cast don’t just play their characters, they live, breath and feel for their characters. They are helped in this task by David Jackson’s wonderfully insightful writing, and his talent as a director, to take even the subtlest gesture, or throwaway line, and make sure it is not wasted. He skilfully uses comedy to diffuse tension which so often results in the audience laughing, but then quickly wondering whether or not they should be!
It’s very hard to pick out a highlight in a show which is nothing less than exceptional throughout but, if I had to, it would be the two-handed scene between Ali (Cole) and Jordan (Mason). Using trust as a weapon, Jordan encourages Ali to face his demons and to open up about his own life just enough to allow him to be manipulated – just as he has manipulated so many others in the past.
In this scene in particular Harvey Cole gives the performance of his life as Ali, with all his emotions laid raw before us and Declan Mason uses his comic skills, together with his incredible ability to use a look, gesture or word to it’s very best effect, to excel in the role of Jordan – with his laid back attitude and likeable personality emphasising the growing sexual tension between the boys.
The pace of the final scenes in the show, where all of the twists and turns are revealed, would put even the best rollercoaster to shame and yet the cast stay firmly in character and use the unfolding situation to tap, once again, into their own emotions and to take the feeling of total gritty reality to a spectacular height before it descends into one of the best comic finales that I have ever seen.
Although Hungry Wolf productions appeal to a wide spectrum of people, it is very easy to see that they are written to engage a brand new generation of younger theatregoers. To take the subjects that they are so familiar with and turn them into relevant, topical and, above all, heartfelt, productions that the youth of today can really understand and, because their sights are set so firmly on the future of live theatre, The Hungry Wolf Visionary Youth Theatre are producing revolutionary and trailblazing theatre right here, right now.
***** Five Stars