---

---

A relatable and emotive performance that draws in the audience to the realities of unrequited love and the challenges that many queer people face – a promising start for the new Mad Jacks Theatre Company. 

---

Scenes with Boys promised a queer and gender-expansive take on miscommunication, love and the messy second adolescence that many queer people face – and through the complications of unrequited love, in a university setting that will be familiar to many, the play did just that. Not only did it deliver on this, but the emotive performances combined with the simple, but effective staging drew you into a story that is sadly relatable to so many. 

The play was set with minimal scenery. When you walked in, the characters are on stage, surrounded by poetry books. Some are moving or dancing around, whilst others are seated pensively, already giving a flavour of what was to come. After a slightly uncertain start, the actors soon settled into their characters and drew us into the intensity of the narrative. 

Three main characters take the audience on their journey through this passionate and sometimes painful story, accompanied by the Shoal of Boys who use movement and characterization to set the scene. Whilst this often worked effectively in a club or pub scene, the use of the extra characters to amplify the emotions of main character Ro sometimes distracted from the strong soliloquies delivered by Cavan Malone, drawing the focus away from these incredibly poignant moments.  Carefully chosen motifs such as drinking wine out of freebie mugs that you would only find at university and freezing outside a nightclub continue to add to the relatable aspects and show the meticulous thought that went into every aspect of the production.

The pièce de résistance of the play was surely the final scene, bringing the audience back to reality with a thump in a clever and unique way and surely earning Smith the Riverside Studios Bitesize Award for Best Direction. Smith’s first play as a writer-director entices audiences with engaging, contemporary dialogue and powerful on-stage relationships, showing great potential for the future of Mad Jacks Theatre Company. 

REVIEWER: Nancy Newberry