
3 performances
Hampton Court Theatre, United Kingdom
Barry Reckord concentrates our attention on a group of five teenage boys in their last week at a comprehensive school. His hero is Cragge, the natural outsider, who responds to the discipline of neither the school nor the gang. Pursuing his own course, he defies the authority of both of them and, as a result, is physically punished both by his contemporaries and his elders. It has a strong implicit indictment of our educational system itself, it has the remarkable feature of authenticity both in its representation of the teachers and the boys themselves.
It is full of humour, it has a richness of language capturing the vigour and raciness of schoolboy speech, and it presents an aspect of our social life in a relevant, entertaining and intelligent manner.