Simply knowing that this play is about a gang of underprivileged 16 year old convent girls on a choir trip, and a glance at the poster, which shows them scruffy and sprawled all over each other, and you have all you need to know about this show.There's no way there isn't going to be strong language, scenes of drug and alcohol abuse, unforgiving peer pressure, lost virginities, teen age pregnancy, lesbian crushes and that they won't all turn out to be rough diamonds with hearts of gold.
And that's exactly and predictably what happens. It's writing by numbers from novelist Alan Warner, and Lee Hall who has cut, pasted and shaped it into a theatre script.
With most critics away at the Edinburgh festival it also provides a slice of gritty Scottish social realism and a cheap fringe aesthetic for those of us left behind.
There's nothing wrong with a fringe theatre aesthetic of course but at the national theatre, the most highly resourced and heavily funded venue in the UK, it seems perverse and pretentious to present something that looks like it's been done with a zero budget. In fact it's neither of these things, the production was conceived by the The National Theatre of Scotland to tour diverse venues easily but you'd need to buy a programme and care to realise that.
The cast of 6 very young women play everyone the choir encounter, often with barely a switch of physicality, let alone a change of costume or setting, on an open school hall-like stage. They're accompanied by a band of 3 who also look like school girls. Littered to either side is discarded rubbish from which the cast occasionally pluck a prop to help the story telling.
And as a piece of story telling it is first class. Even as every yawningly obvious plot twist plays out the power of the spoken word, mime or the simple use of a found object to conjure up a new character or location, shines through.
In lesser hands it might all have seemed like a badly resourced class room presentation but Vicky Featherstone is a superb director who has succeeded in forming these inexperienced actors into a tightly disciplined team who never let the energy drop or your attention wander.
In fact the only dull moments are when the girls sing from their choir's repertoire. Again, grindingly predictably the songs are juxtaposed with the drama to provide an ironic comment; so, for instance, the most shocking behaviour is interspersed with prim religious songs. This is such a hackneyed, oft used device that it seems hardly worth bothering with and the cast only sing as well as the ragged mob they're playing, so each musical number feels like an unnecessary hold up to the action.
With its frank, unflinching depiction of teenage life and language this is a production which feels like it hopes to shock; I can't imagine who'd be surprised by its contents though. Every generation of kids think they invented bad behaviour, language, sex, illicit smoking, drugs and alcohol abuse, little suspecting their parents and grandparents also enjoyed the same things.
Despite all these reservations this is a fun evening and although we've heard it all before and might prefer something a little glossier from the UK's wealthiest producers, the sight of the next generation experiencing the rites of passage which we too once survived is always going to tug at the heartstrings. Everyone knows the evening will end with the cast singing an anthem about their future, but that doesn't stop it being moving when, of course, they sing I'm Every Woman.
It's bracing, it's funny, it's wittily and effectively staged, it's superbly acted... I'm just not sure, with so much other great London theatre fighting for your attention that I can recommend the National's foray into fringe theatre as the best show to spend your money on.
Grab yourself some tickets while there's still a few left for GROUNDHOG DAY at the Old Vic, the new musical by the team behind MATILDA. It's very likely the whole limited run will sell out.