Kev, Jamal and Ryan used to run together in the winning school relay team. Now they are running just to stand still on the huge housing estate where they live. Newly released from Feltham, hard-man Kev is trying to go straight, but its difficult when you find your friend has taken your place as leader of the pack. Everyone is toughing it out, including Kev's schoolgirl kid sister, Tash, whose pint-sized swagger has some - but not all of them-fooled at school.
Written by Roy Williams, whose Sing Yer Hearts Out for the Lads was such a big hit at the National, this show ploughs the familiar furrow of the urban young in a crisis of identity, caught between the rock of no hope and no choices and the hard place of gangland culture. But it does so in Williams' customary winning way, with the lightest and warmest of touches.
As ever, Williams succeeds in making every one of his characters glow with life - even the most minor are complex, interesting and vulnerable. He so empathises with them that you can't help empathising with them too. You want them to be alright even as you know they are galloping towards disaster.
It is not all sweetness and light - although it is full of delightful moments before the darkness takes over. Too much of the writing is overly televisual and doesn't really stake a claim for its place in the theatre, and there is a structural choppiness about the evening. But it is an unpretentiously likeable show with real heart and a wide appeal, and the cast convey the stroppiness and confusion of the young at the same time as being as sweet and tender.
