Jimmy is dead. Like a growing number of young men, dead by his own hand. His four best mates gather for his funeral. Amid the bottles of beer and fag ash, the recriminations and revelations, a story begins to emerge: a story less about what Scott and Jimmy might or might not have done, and more about the burden of being young, white and male in Britain today.
Jimmy is dead but it is Scott, Steve, Karl and Simon who are being destroyed by their inability to express emotion. They would like to make contact, they long to comfort each other, but instead they take risks. They hang upside down from ladders, thump each other and negotiate the sheer drop from one side of a bridge to the other. But they can never negotiate the gulf between what they say and what they really feel.
This is quite a departure for Frantic Assembly. The trademark monologues have gone. So has most of the frenetic sweatiness of previous work. In its place is something much quieter and more reflective, much more beautiful, but no less true.
There are times when the script struggles to match the piece's physical expressiveness, and the blurring between the performers' personas and the characters they are playing demands better acting. But the success of the evening is built on sustaining a ferocious energy and in creating an instantly understandable body language.
In one scene the lads sit around a table, but in every gesture and physical tic you can read their feelings. The danger is that this play could be just good-looking surface gloss, but the precision of the choreography ensures that it alternately makes you laugh and pierces your heart.
Until December 4. Box Office: 0181-741 2311
