A young Glasgow boy wakes up in a prison cell one morning and can't remember how he got there, or what he's done to merit being locked up. Gradually it all comes flooding back. It's a familiar tale of grim life on a tower-block estate: a wife-beating dad, a granddad dying of cancer, isolation and an addiction to violent movies. The question is not where did it all go wrong, but how could it possibly ever go right? Inspired by the true-life story of a Glasgow young offender now on probation for attempted murder, Davey Anderson's short, sharp shocker of play may sometimes come across like a cautionary tale intended to alert young audiences to the dangers of doubtful movies, dodgy friends and vodka spiked with ecstasy and Valium, but it has a spiky edginess in Neil Bettles's stylish, strongly physical production that always keeps you interested.
The story, with its mean streets and grim inevitability doesn't feel particularly fresh, and just because a story is true it doesn't make it more interesting. But this new young company, ThickSkin, makes this 50 minutes seem like more than the sum of its parts. It's as if this young lad is constantly being chased by shadows. The music meanwhile could be done for GBH, the flashed images of the Glasgow streets have a grim, dizzying quality, and the whole thing swirls across the stage like a dirty despairing ballet.
In the same venue, Jack Thorne's Bunny dissects the low self-esteem of a middle-class teenage girl; while at the Traverse, in Teenage Riot, a group of nicely brought-up Belgians are telling the world how unhappy they are. Blackout does nothing to dispel the idea that the lot of the teenager is not a happy one, but this lad has more reason than most to cry.
