The Royal Exchange Studio is an absolute tip. Fly Pie and his pals Sham and Jane live in it, sifting through the rubbish for scraps to sell, while dodging death squads on the lookout for vagrant children.
Melvin Burgess originally wrote his novel in response to a report from Bogota, where the official solution to the rising number of homeless children is to shoot them. Lavinia Murray's adaptation locates the action in a dystopian alternative version of Manchester.
Iqbal Khan's production transforms the studio into a desolate cardboard city, which keeps the audience on its toes, as the only means of sitting down is to pull up a box. The cast forage around for space, unearthing weird, mutant Fagin-figures, apocalyptic tea ladies, and a stolen baby swaddled in masking tape.
The disposal of the infant constitutes the main thrust of the action, as Fly, Sham and Jane debate the moral implications of holding it to ransom. The gruesomely deformed puppet possesses features only a mother could love, but the price on its head would be enough for Fly to realise his dream of escaping the tip and opening a bakery. (Why? Because "bakers are always warm and have enough to eat".)
The production is conceived for young audiences in Burgess's characteristic manner, which means there's plenty of sex, violence and bad language. But there are some impressively committed performances from the young cast, particularly Emma Hartley-Miller as a pragmatic child prostitute, Jane, who believes that "dreams have to be big enough to keep you going and small enough to come true".
The 90-minute adaptation periodically feels overly compressed but Khan's production generates sufficient energy to keep the young audience poised on the edge of their crates.
· Until July 30. Box office: 0161-833 9833.
