“A highly energetic performance, presenting stark, fast-paced vignettes contrasting the innocence and vulnerability of youth with the wild, dangerously carefree onset of adulthood.”

Editorial Rating: 5 Stars (Outstanding)

This is a lively coming-of-age story written and performed by Noah Manzoor, Kai Porter, and Alfie Wickham (collectively known as Kickdrum), and apparently based on their actual teenage diaries. In a highly physical production, themes such as cultural identity, sexuality, and the pressures of boyhood, adolescence, and the approach of manhood are explored in a punchy drama enhanced by music and dance, with a cinematic ambience bestowed by acrobatically effective use of hand-held lighting.

In the medium-sized black box studio of Bunker Two at the Pleasance Courtyard, the three young men delivered a highly energetic performance, presenting stark, fast-paced vignettes contrasting the innocence and vulnerability of youth with the wild, dangerously carefree onset of adulthood; all interspersed with highly synchronised bursts of vigorous street dance.

Whilst this is very much a young person’s show (at 67, I was the oldest person in the room by a country mile), their evocation of the crass boorishness and insensitivity of male childhood raised a wry smile; then the angst-ridden sexual fumblings involved in the onset of adolescence and then manhood gave rise to regular laugh-out-loud moments.

No punches are pulled in what is very much a vigorously in-your-face production, with the dark undercurrents of racism and homophobia often raising their ugly heads. Unfortunately, one other dark undercurrent was occasional external noise coming from the queue for another show outside the venue’s poorly-soundproofed door. However, the vigorous enunciation and projection of the talented onstage trio easily overcame this unwelcome backing track.

With the auditorium almost full for the show I saw in the very early stages of this year’s Fringe, it already looks like a pretty hot ticket – so I wouldn’t hang around if you wanted to see it.