BWW Reviews: OPERATION GREENFIELD, Battersea Arts Centre, June 8 2012

Pouring geekishness on top of nerdishness, three girls and one boy come together to form a band to compete in the village of Stokeley's Annual Music Competition - Middle Britain's Got Talent (if you will). And these musicians have plenty of talent - playing a dizzying array of instruments, swapping them as rapidly as the band's name changes. But the quartet's gifts are swamped by these bright teens' earnest and total commitment to music and to Christianity.

Little Bulb's charming show explores the gawkish awkwardness of adolescence, a time when one's sense of humour has not caught up with one's vocabulary, one's confidence hasn't caught up with one's hormones and one's world seems to be expanding, terrifyingly, at an exponential rate. As the band practise, wind (and sex) each other up, we catch long forgotten memories surfacing, as we hear the things we used to say all those years ago in that oh so earnest tone.

Though there's a few cringeworthy incidents, Little Bulb Theatre's show is not in the vein of Ricky Gervais' comedies of embarassment. It's much more affectionate than that - delivered by performers not long out of their teens themselves, who display musical virtuosity far beyond the level of a village talent show and are never less than respectful to their characters. Unlike many plays / shows based on teenage angst, Operation Greenfield does not have anything to say about drugs, sexuality, rebellion. Its message (if there is a message at all) is that young people are just that - people who happen to be young. We know this because there is a young person buried deep inside each of us and this show helps us find that person - whether we like it or not.