‘The world has never been kind to refugees’. This powerful truism is spoken by the nine-year-old narrator, Alexa of Rose Theatre's Boy at the Back of the Class, running until Feb 22. But is it possible to change that script? And can children provide this leadership?
OUR VERDICT
Manuel Harlan
This straightforward morality tale, based on a popular book by Onjali Q Rauf, and adapted by Nick Ahad, is told with a mostly pre-teen audience in mind. Ahmed, the eponymous boy, is a refugee.
Alexa leads a gang of nine-year-olds, into whose classroom the traumatised Ahmed has washed up (literally). How do they react? With kindness and empathy or antipathy and spite?
The answer is a bit of both, but Alexa’s own grief for the loss of her father propels her to lead the majority to an ultimately compassionate response. If only life were so simple.
Manuel Harlan
It turns out that Alexa is also a descendant of refugees, too, and when you trace it back, so are most of us. There is a clever twist at the end of Act One, when it turns out that the audience can understand Ahmed, even if his classmates can’t. Perhaps this is what we are being reminded of.
This fare is mostly aimed at children, but this production is not stuck together with Blue Peter’s legendary sticky-back plastic.
The imaginative set, based on the climbing bars of a school gym, (real enough to give me a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach), along with clever lighting design, transforms from the kids’ classroom to their playground, then a shopping street, a double-decker bus, Alexa’s living room, the London tube, a black cab and even Buckingham Palace. It’s ingenious stuff, albeit that the sound designers could be kinder to the ears of us grown-ups.
Credit goes to the Director, Monique Touko, and a skilful cast.
Manuel Harlan
Alexa (Sasha Desouza-Willock) and her gang are convincing nine-year-olds. Special mention, of course, to Serkan Avlit as the believable Ahmed.
The children feel like real children, curious, funny, loyal, slightly chaotic. The adults support the story well, but the heart of it really belongs to the kids, as it should be.
There are some laughs and a few poignant moments, where the whole audience seemed to lean in (and at several points in the evening, join in).
Sometimes I felt the simple message erred towards the simplistic.
Whilst Ahmed’s story (spoiler alert) ends happily, as we struggle society-wide to deal with this hot topic, I fear that it may not be so easy to find our way through as a nine-year-old imagines.
Nevertheless, it’s well done; a show ideal for families, schools, or anyone who wants to see something that reminds us why welcoming a stranger matters. Well worth the trip to Kingston.
