★★★★
Lyrics singing of a sunny Glasgow play the audience into the Space on the Mile at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and a bunch of Glaswegian teenagers follow, bounding onto the stage. They’re in full shell suits, they’re hanging about the streets, and mostly they just want their Buckfast fix. From Geez a Break Productions, When We Were Young paints a vivid picture of Glasgow in the nineties through a snapshot of the lives of working class school kids.
The set in The Space on the Mile – Space 3 is minimal but the brash, energetic nature of the dialogue leaves little necessity for anything else. Between plumbing the depths of penis sizes and considering the future, Geez a Break Productions expertly dart around the topics that get picked up in your spare time mulling the world over. Leaving a lot of room for jibing at each other, the characters are very quickly brought to life. Fast-paced, laugh-a-minute scripting doesn’t miss a single beat and has the audience falling for the rough-edged charm of the characters.
The script allows a gentle probe into the mindsets of teenagers at a time where deprivation and unemployment are soaring and Glasgow is known as the murder capital of Europe. Morale is low, and there is limited self belief; the idea of a brighter future has never felt further away. That leaves the teenagers, mostly, living in the present—and living for the Buckfast. On equal footing with the underage drinking is the capacity for fights and issues with gangs.
Featuring flashbacks of their youths from characters as their future selves provides reflections of the nature of gang violence, and how trapping simply being born on the wrong street can be. The bleak reality that Geez a Break Productions paint is that really you have no choice, and that some things are predetermined at birth. This is more or less stated, plainly, and the complete lack of frills makes When We Were Young even more of a difficult watch. Echoes of dreams of “fancy houses” and “two toilets: one upstairs and one downstairs!” slowly break your heart as class, upbringing and prospects are laid out in the performance.
The show does not shy away from the harsh reality of gang crime. It pulls no punches, and whilst it is a rollercoaster of a script—tears of laughter and sadness are equality abundant—the atmosphere is fraught. Each actor captivates the audience, the characters leap off the stage. They are funny, petulant, relatable; it is the glorious teenage years amongst the rubble of the socio-economics of the times.
When We Were Young is theatrical genius that comes with a warning. This is still happening—this is the nineties, but it is also now. The show is both exciting and terrifying and it makes for an imperative watch.
When We Were Young will be performed at The Space on the Mile, Space 3 until 23 August as part of Edinburgh Fringe.
Words by Hannah Goldswain
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