(5 / 5)

Images Credit Kirsten McTernan

Please note this review features in-depth description of the plot

A Tidy Boy, starring Lynn Hunter as Ann, Oliver Jacob Davies as Geraint, Eiry Thomas as Sylvia, Geraint DeCarvalho as Kai and Kelsey Short as Kirsty, is a comedic and emotional play about differences in worldview, age, background, sexuality and self-awareness, set in a youth work project in Neath.

The set remained divided into three parts; the entrance to the building where the youth project was set and where project manager Sylvia worked, the main space where youth worker Geraint held his sessions with Kai, and the entrance with a sink and armchair where Kai lived with his girlfriend and mother of his two children, Kirsty. Ann would often come through the entrance downstage left, and she didn’t have an on-stage room in which she mainly occupied because she ran the workshop (which we didn’t see).

The play opens with Geraint being interviewed for a job. He is 22 years old and has been living in London, having gone to university, but has recently moved back home because his mum died. He has the qualifications to be a youth worker and he wants the job. Ann and Sylvia sit in the interview with Kai, pretending to be young people, and as part of his interview, he teaches them how to put on a condom using a banana. Of course the characters were laughing and making jokes themselves and it set the audience off. It was such an effective way to set the comedic tone right from the start and show the audience the themes that would be explored. I don’t think it’s hard to get an audience laughing when condoms are involved!

Geraint gets the job, and although the timeline between each scene may be slightly ambiguous, we can tell that the whole play spans a few months, maybe half a year (it’s not particularly relevant). We see his character grow from the relationships he has with Sylvia and Ann, and with Kai, and we see Kai grow with and away from Geraint.

Kai is 18, and he and his 25 year old girlfriend and their two children moved to Neath from London. He is a youth offender and doesn’t have qualifications, and takes part in this youth project, primarily working with Geraint. Because of their similarity in age, and perhaps their sexuality, even though their background and childhood seems entirely different, their relationship is interesting, and they both help each other become better, even though the highest emotional and dramatic point is when Kai does something to Geraint that they cannot come back from.

How Geraint and Kai impact each other is perhaps the most interesting part of the show, or maybe it’s the difference between Geraint and Ann’s approach to their jobs.

You see, Ann is 72, experienced in youth work, and she says what she wants to say without thinking about the repercussions or whether it’s offensive. She uses bribery and taunts to get the young offenders to do the work they’re supposed to do. Geraint is there to do the job ‘properly’ with modern training and he likes to follow the correct procedures and guidelines. The play wouldn’t be the same, nor would it be half as funny, without their clash of personalities. They butt heads several times, but by the end, you can see how both approaches are needed, although they both need to compromise, and how the system sometimes works against the people it’s supposed to protect.

Through Kai’s actions, by the end, where Geraint may have phoned the police and gone through the correct procedures if it had happened months ago, he recognised that the system may not help everyone involved. He became a better and more open person because of Ann and Kai, Ann became better because of Geraint, and Kai became better because of Geraint too. I love a play that explores humanity and clashes of personality, but in the end, the characters are better off because they have met the other characters.

The play explores issues surrounding sexuality and identity, personality, experience versus modernity, and not only does each character seem so fleshed out, but the comedy is perfect too, and adds to the emotional parts. Every aspect of the show is perfectly thought out.

A Tidy Boy is definitely the tidiest play I’ve seen for a while, and I’d recommend it to everyone!