BWW Reviews: BARBARIANS, Tooting Arts Club, April 25 2012

Three lads meet to see what fun they can - as lads do. They swear a bit, they brag a bit and with no money (and little prospect of it, deep in the 1970s' recession) they steal a bit. They're not satisfied with their lot, but they don't really know what else there is. 

Barrie Keeffe's Barbarians (at Tooting Arts Club until 12 May) tracks the lives of these lads through three linked plays spanning five or so turbulent years in London. Paul (Thomas Coombes) is the strongest personality, but consumed by a rage that festers until it explodes in a frenzy of racist violence; Jan (Jamie Crew) is weak, easily led and scared, ultimately too scared to resist a catastrophic decision; Louis (Tyler Fayose) has dreams, gains perspective and succeeds in escaping, but not escaping far enough. With strong echoes of Shane Meadows "This is England" (though written long before that film was made) and Absolute Beginners, Barbarians is an unflinching look at how young men react when education, politics and economics excludes them from a world that worships flash cars, easy girls and sharp clothes.

All three actors give strong performances - and they need to, as we are in their company for over two hours. Tyler Fayose convinces as Louis, catching just the right mix of innocence and arrogance as he leaves his erstwhile buddies behind. Jamie Crew twitches and blinks, conveying Jan's desperate need to be part of the gang, any gang, to give him an identity he can use to bury his past. Thomas Coombes portrays Paul's decline with enough charisma to make us feel an empathy with him, even as we see the fatal combination of psychosis and neo-fascism grip and consume him. There's a little too much of soap opera's equating of emotional turmoil with shouty acting for my taste, but audiences love rawness on stage and rawness is what they get.

Barabarians' message is that the mean streets of London will always harbour lads pumped full of testosterone and short on the maturity required to deal with it. Without structure, these lives teeter on The Edge of petty crime, then topple into serious crime. There is such a thing as Society and it's society's obligation to give these lads the opportunities to find a structure that works for them and produce Louises and not Pauls. It's a message no less powerful and no less relevant for having been written 35 years ago.