IN EVERY city you see them. The young men with nowhere to go and nothing to do. They are not unique to London, or Paris or Rio; each country, unhappy in its own way, has its own means of production. They are the world's problem demographic, caught between childhood and adulthood, care and responsibility, education and application. Wherever there is poverty and inequality, young men are waiting, ready to explode. Wherever there are cracks, they will be falling through them.
If raw, unfocused youth poses a danger to society, it also poses a threat to art. Inarticulacy isn't easy to articulate; apathy hardly inspires. The perils are those of adolescence itself: clumsy expression, uncertainty and the sad inevitability of aging.
Happily, Leo Butler's new play “Boy”, at the Almeida theatre in Islington, London (itself a scene of marked social inequality), does not suffer these issues. Mr Butler and his director, Sasha Wares, working closely with a predominantly teenage cast, have captured the slouch and slang of the language, not to mention the bustle and anonymity of London, thanks in large part to the play's...Continue reading
