If most people had a time machine, it’s unlikely their first choice of destination would be Truro in 1987. Joanna Neary’s storytelling show charts the highs and lows of the bored, hormonal teenagers that kill time in Truro’s youth club. While it may not change anyone’s mind about their fantasy destination, it creates an impressively vivid setting clearly close to Neary’s heart. Neary’s gawky charm matches the fluctuating fortunes of a group of sixteen-year-olds. Her story centres around the saga of ‘Diana’ plucking up the courage to ask ‘Gavin’ on a date. Neary captures a specific time and place with real charm and a heartening attachment, complemented by varied pageants of teenage awkwardness – from misguided dance routines to their stances in a game of ping-pong. It is this commitment to capturing the heart-on-sleeve awkwardness of the characters who populate her past that provides the emotional core of the show, but also demonstrates its limits. Neary herself presents an expansive world that can occasionally spread her talents for character comedy too thinly. Her attention to detail in portraying a large number of characters who share the comic potential of teen awkwardness sometimes makes the differentiation between them garbled. The sheer number of characters makes individuals seem quite thinly drawn, at its worst descending into a repetition of characteristics that induce irritation rather than sympathy.The mundane minutiae of Neary’s teens, even down to the correct way to dance to ‘Rock Lobster’ by The B-52s, is captured faithfully and with real flair.
