Promises + Animals
Unity Theatre, Liverpool
5/5

NO-ONE would blame young people today for despairing about the future as Osborne steals benefits from the poorest, abolishes the miserable maintenance grant for university students on low incomes, squashes dissent and demonises working-class communities.

Yet, standing in a packed house in Liverpool’s Unity Theatre, wildly applauding a magnificent group of young actors, a small ray of hope seeps through those dark clouds.

20 Stories High is quickly building a great reputation for innovative theatre for young people. Following the hugely successful Melody Loses Her Mojo in 2013 and last year’s wonderful Black, the company’s new double bill Promises and Animals is another triumph.

Promises centres on the pressures faced by year 11s preparing for their GCSEs and it’s not only the exams that are causing stresses and strains in their young lives. Merely trying to exist in a world that doesn’t care has its own burdens.

Following the 2011 riots, arch-Tory journalist Max Hastings crassly branded the poorest young people as nothing more than a bunch of wild animals.

In Keith Saha’s Animals we hear about the lives of youngsters living in one street in an impoverished area of Liverpool in the aftermath of those riots.

Their story is very different from Hastings’s — far from being animals, we find great resilience and defiance and a community both proud and dignified.

There is one moment in this fabulous play where two black kids bemoan the harsh sentences meted out for minor offences in the riots. A young black woman then emerges to deliver a soliloquy about the racism in Baltimore.

In a spine-tingling moment, the controlled rage in her delivery is as good and powerful as anything currently to be seen in the theatre. It’s a speech which should be recorded and circulated widely.

Both plays are angry, challenging, intelligent, thoughtful, funny and above all hopeful. They’re performed by a large cast of fine actors who give voice to their emotions through music, poetry, and dance.

20 Stories High is a remarkable theatre company and we need more like it across the country to give voice to such young people. They are the future and if their talent is harnessed, Cameron, Osborne and their ilk don’t stand a chance.

• For more information on 20 Stories High, visit 20storieshigh.org.uk