David KS Tse's play, a co- production between Soho Theatre and Yellow Earth Theatre Company, is aimed at the 10-14 age group and their families. The wide age span is a pretty tall order. Tse's play concentrates on Paul, a 12-year-old Philippine boy with an interest in computer games and martial arts, who is finding the transition from primary to secondary school difficult because he is being targeted by bullies who call him "chinky" and duff him up.
But it is out of the frying pan and into the fire when Paul falls in with Anaconda and his gang, whose misunderstanding of Chinese and the martial arts culture, has led them to style themselves as the Black Snake Triad. Soon Paul is truanting and stealing, much to the distress of his hard-working Catholic parents.
What I hoped for from this play, which is performed as part of a new sponsorship initiative called Sainsbury's Checkout Theatre, was a production with strong youth appeal but which actually transcended the barriers of theatre for young people and theatre for the rest of the population. The calibre of those involved suggested there was a good chance that it would succeed. Regrettably what is on offer is a strongly issue-based piece with the unmistakable whiff of theatre in education. There is nothing wrong with theatre in education, but its place is in the school not the theatre.
The young cast are great, particularly Tom Wu, who is not only a martial arts expert but manages to convey all the confusion of a 12-year-old. The martial arts sequences are exciting and the whole thing is technically impressive.
But Tse's script uses language that lacks street credibility and is too transparent; the fantasy sequences are the equivalent of the "it was all a dream" cop-out and the mystic message that you can find strength through gentleness is inadequate. If you were a badly bullied 12-year-old would you find the idea that "the smallest stream can cut through the hardest iron" as much help as Childline?
Until October 7. Box office: 0161-274 0600.
