The Study of Young Men

Corpus Playrooms, 25th – 29th January, 9.30, £5-6

Directed by Verity Trynka-Watson

[rating:2/5]

The only studying of young men I indulge in takes place on the dance-floor. The study conducted last night at the Corpus Playrooms was considerably less up-beat and only a little less artificial. I left feeling far from intoxicated.

The action of the newly-written four-piece by Adam McNally, occurs almost entirely in the memory of the conveniently eloquent Anthony as he attempts to disentangle the threads of his crumbling relationships with schoolmates Rob (emo-poet) and Charlie (lad-with-issues) in the aftermath of Jonah’s (geek-loner) sudden death.

The casting isn’t spot on. Robin Morton’s Jonah is a likeable wall-flower, though unable to suppress a giggle as his character observes that cars parked at the barn-party (no less) are being ‘shat’ upon. Twice. Craig Nunes (Charlie) is the least self-conscious of the bunch and his character is all the more believable for it. Even if the script does force him to rely heavily on shouting ‘fuck!’ to convey moments of emotional intensity, I get the impression he could manage without it.

The programme informs me that Tom Powell (Rob) was looking forward to ‘the challenge of playing a young man of a similar age and with similar interests’. Though his enthusiasm is commendable, I feel the challenge proved too much for him. A handful of angsty reflections on mortality and one would-be moving speech on unrequited friendship were delivered rather woodenly. Admittedly his part is not entirely convincing: Rob is an artistically tortured teen whose friend’s tragic death provides him with the emotional trigger for a frenzy of poetic production. And his car smells of love-heart sweeties.

Show-stealer Nkoko Sekete’s experience works in his favour. His impeccable enunciation as Anthony and balmy ‘posh’ accent lulls me into a semi-trance, part-and-parcel of his dream-like memories. The play’s rare moments of real poignancy are generated by him as he attempts to repress the painful memory of Jonah’s death.

Portraying the devastating effects of an untimely death on those left behind without drippily over-sentimentalising or falling back on cliché is no easy task. The Study of Young Men is nearly up to it. The fact that the dead Jonah wanders about on stage – a reincarnated figment of Anthony’s memory – prevents the tragic elements from plunging the play into too deep a depression. The deftly-written and memorably-directed episode in which Anthony adopts a magician’s guise in order to rob his two living friends of their ability to understand their ‘mother tongue’ initially seems distractingly irrelevant. But it resolves itself ingeniously with Anthony’s announcement ‘Jonah is dead’, in reaction to which Rob and Charlie express repeated incomprehension. I savoured the highlight of being wrong-footed by this particular piece of dramatic agility.

The set is sparse but appropriately so: a single cluttered writing desk and mismatched chair on an otherwise empty stage. An assortment of empty beer cans dare me to forget just how downwiththekids the play is. The four wheely desk chairs which form the make-shift Nissan Micra (in which our foursome make Inbetweener-esque road trips) are shoved against the back curtain when not in use. Neither would pedantic neatness of staging be fitting here. It is human relationships which are at stake and they are allowed, quite rightly, to take centre-stage.

Where the play eventually falls down is in its over-zealous attempt to be naturalistic. Neither script nor actors are wholly to blame: everyone is simply trying that little bit too hard. Parallels with The Inbetweeners work at times to the play’s advantage. If only it were more able to laugh at itself in the same insightfully self-deprecating way that the TV show so charmingly can. Ultimately, The Study of Young Men doesn’t quite succeed in giving its characters the genuine depth and subtlety that it works so hard for. But then again I never could endorse a play in which the past tense of ‘to shit’ crops up more than once.