Image Credit Kirsten McTernan

(5 / 5)

Please note this review contains strong language, mature content and detailed description of the plot.

Physical Education, written by Jonathan Houlston (who also plays Joe) and directed by Richard Mylan, is a play about how mental health and masculinity affects teenage boys, explored across many scenes and set entirely in one room.

As you walk into the theatre space, the atmosphere immediately gives off a sense of the changing room at school. It’s intimate, there’s nowhere to hide: seats on three sides of the stage, a block of lockers in the middle, and the speakers play grungy, garage-type music. Electronic, repeated sounds, with a good bass. There is more of this type of music throughout. It sets the scene, complimenting the youthful but dark themes the show explores.

The show opens with a song about smashing and a guy walks onto the stage in football kit, looking into the audience, before a bunch of lads come on holding a bench each. They jump around, showing themselves off as ‘hard’, shouting and taunting. You can practically smell the testosterone. They set the benches down and begin changing into their kit ready for PE, talking to each other.

There’s lots of offensive and harsh language in this play: the way they talk about women, banging them, mentioning their cocks, different ways they describe sex, showing off that they could ‘pull any bird’, what they’d make the woman do, but also, a lot of it is them bullying each other (played off as ‘just banter’). They put each other down, teasing about their body count, being fat, being too ‘weak’. They even use gay or the ‘f’ slur as an insult (which I can’t believe is still an insult), and once we find out that two of the boys are gay and dating each other, it hits even harder. It’s very shocking and not easy to listen to at times. The audience are not eased into the subject matter at all, we are thrown straight into it, and it’s very fast-paced. But I think that is so effective.

There’s lots of comedy in it too, even during the sharp bits of dialogue, but that only adds to the themes even more, and the production utilises transitions and sound well, including having school noise and an underlying bass in certain sections to add tension.

It’s excellent at examining what it really means to be masculine vs feminine, strong vs weak, being true to yourself vs hiding, hurting and pain, the different experiences everyone has, their relationships, and why that might lead them to the choices they make.

The biggest bully and the one with the foulest language is a lad called Jason. His closest friend is Joe, and he’s quite nasty in his ‘banter’ to everyone, but he even bullies Joe. He spikes Joe on two occasions: in a party we don’t see and in the Halloween party we do, by adding more vodka to his drink and getting him to sniff some drugs. He doesn’t see it as spiking, however. This is probably how he, and boys like him in the real world, live with the decisions they make. Adding labels such as ‘spiking’ your mate makes it sound really negative, so he just describes it as ‘only topping up Joe’s drink’. He makes Max kneel in front of him and open his mouth in one scene when there is no one else there in the changing room, and he walks up to him. His privates and Max’s mouth are very close to each other. His attitude towards women is very derogatory and objectifying.

But the show is really good at showing every perspective. The reason he reacts like this is because of his home life. It’s never stated but fairly obvious, as one day he turns up with bruising around his eye and makes up a different lie each time he’s asked about it. Later on, it’s just him and Miss Rider, the teacher, in the changing room, and it seems like he’s about to open up. We can hear voices in his head shouting that he’s a ‘f****** waste of space’, implying that his home dynamic and the bruise are related (we can work out the rest). Just as he’s beginning to speak, one of the lads comes in. The moment is lost. Who knows what might have happened if he’d have been able to speak about it?

It all comes to a head at the Halloween party, and we see what can happen if we allow young men to think that speaking in the way that they do is acceptable. Also, if they stay silent and don’t challenge people when they hear it, this language will remain. It is damaging and hurtful to women, as well as to boys themselves. They need help despite how tough they feel pressured appearing.

Physical Education is a brilliant take on mental health and how your relationships and childhood shape who you are, especially for boys in the current climate. It’s fast-paced and not afraid to touch on the darkest of topics, but it also makes you laugh.

I urge everyone to come and see this play at the Grand Theatre.