What an exciting writer Ella Hickson is. Yes, Boys, her third play, in which student flatmates reach the ends of their tethers as they reach the ends of their degrees, promises more in its dynamic first hour than it always knows what to do with in its second. But even that is oddly fitting for an admirably ambitious story about twentysomethings who see their futures as indebted and uncertain.
So, as they hang out in their Edinburgh kitchen, this bunch are starting to feel nostalgic for the life they are still leading (there must be a German word for this). The brooding Mack has just taken a sixth-former’s virginity. The loquacious and outrageous Timp has just cheated on his girlfriend again. Cam, a concert violinist, the one with a future, wonders if he wants it. Only Benny, lurking on top of the fridge, mourning the suicide of his brother, looks beyond pill-popping and partying as a rubbish strike leads to social breakdown.
Yet the other flatmates try to ignore the rubbish piling up. That’s partly symbolic, a point underscored when Robert Icke’s charged production breaks off from capturing the combative chemistry of bright young men for the odd expressionist flourish. Yet what really impresses is the way the show captures a twilight mood between hope and despair, in which partying blots out fear. The female characters — Alison O’Donnell as Timp’s girlfriend, Laura, and Eve Ponsonby as Benny’s brother’s girlfriend, Sophie — have their eyes on a committed future. The boys can’t think that far ahead.
Instead Samuel Edward Cook’s fit, furious Mack is forever squaring off to Danny Kirrane as the big, bereaved Benny, who has an intelligence beyond his ability to find a context for it. Tom Mothersdale’s gabby Timp is too much and he knows it. Lorn Macdonald doesn’t look entirely convinced by himself as Cam, but then Cam isn’t entirely convinced by himself either. Where next?
Yes, that’s been the theme of a billion and one bloody awful graduate plays since long before endemic individualism, economic meltdown and £9,000-a-year fees. But Hickson knows her characters off by heart, gives them wit and depth. The second half is more reflective, sometimes strains for significance. The battle between Benny’s collectivism and Mack’s macho self-reliance doesn’t resolve itself. Cam’s fate, by contrast, is an unconvincing contrivance. But Boys is invigorating, and brilliantly played: The Young Ones reborn as tragicomedy.
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Box office: 020-7478 0100, to June 16