My Name is Richard

Richard is the butt of school jibes and his home life is not much better in spite of his having two loyal brothers. Mum and dad are always sparring and so he retreats into his safe haven of fantasy movies, endlessly attempting to discuss the virtues of Lord of the Rings and King Kong. There’s a girlfriend, Annie, but the trouble is she isn’t Richard’s, she’s currently dating school bully Harry. When Richard discovers that Harry is doing drugs, he starts to gather evidence on his mobile phone to get Harry arrested, and so grab Annie for himself. ‘How can you say you love me?’ she fires at him when he eventually plays his hand with staggering naivety. ‘You don’t even know me.’This musical play is an exploration of teenage angst and adolescent confusion performed by an ensemble cast who are a delight to watch for the hour and forty minutes that it takes the drama to unfold. Not until the end do we discover the real reason for Richard’s monochrome view of the world and his weak grasp of reality. This could so easily have slipped into social commentary but it is a mark of its brilliant young team and Tom Kirkham’s raw, earthy, script that the story develops with all the energy of a playground rumble. It’s rough and unpolished in places and needs a bit of cutting, some of the performances are better than others and needed more rehearsal, and Kirkham’s direction of his own script could benefit from a sharper perspective, but it’s the work-in-progress feel of this script that gives the production its charm. The characters are all recognisable, but never cliched. Blair Anderson plays the wimpy Richard, supported by his two brothers Ed and Alex (Adam Philps and Sam Sadler) the latter of which almost pays the ultimate price when bully Harry (Nic Zabilowicz) produces a razor in the school playground. This is a show which quite definitely belongs to the boys. Particularly memorable is Stuart Matthews as Gavin, Richard’s tiny waif of a best mate, who tries, unsuccessfully, to divert his friend from a path leading to certain tragedy. The songs are good too. I particularly liked the duo ‘Man and wife’ sung by Richard’s parents, played by Adam Lee and Amira Matthews, and ‘Roll up’, with the cast donning hoods and Nick Bosanko sliding on as the rat-faced local teenage drug dealer. The playground ensemble numbers are also well-staged. While so many small scale musicals contain invasive numbers that seem to appear from nowhere and go off in the same general direction, Nicolas Bloomfield’s perfectly pitched music for this show has real heart and soul. Don’t go along expecting, like Naomi Campbell, a brilliantly cut diamond. This show set in a black box space has plenty of rough corners, but it is a deeply moving portrayal of adolescent friendships and rivalries, love and loss, confusion and hope. For its tremendous and engaging young cast it is also a perfect showcase, and that surely is what the Edinburgh Fringe is all about. As I left the auditorium, a boy of about ten years old exclaimed to his parents ‘I really enjoyed that.’ So did I.