The Custard Boys **

Tabard Theatre, London
**

"despite some individual strengths, this play doesn’t work. It lacks the fast paced humour to make the caricatures and predictable outcomes entertaining rather than obvious, trite and telegraphed."

Now performing at the Tabard Theatre, John Rae’s novel The Custard Boys has been adapted and directed by Glenn Chandler. Full of jolly schoolboys (ra-ra-ra) that have been evacuated to Norfolk during the Blitz, the gang of London evacuees spend their time preoccupied by a sense of hierarchy, war game fantasies and rivalries with locals. The arrival of Mark, a young Jewish Austrian evacuee, shakes everything up as he initiates a homoerotic relationship with one of the gang.

A nicely informal and light-hearted atmosphere at the start is promisingly well established as audience members settle themselves into their seats: the chat of the boys playing onstage is complemented by the rustle of the brown paper sweet bags we’ve all been handed. The boys are credibly youthful looking in their emblazoned schoolboy kit and, as the play starts, the enjoyment of gun-orientated games and British vs. Huns role play is both believable and well executed. Although the group’s hierarchy is drawn along incredibly obvious lines, the play does not suffer because of it, and the actors make good efforts to establish their caricatures. Scenes of mischief making behind the teacher’s back are good, and cross-dressing and assumption of other characters is quite fun. The roles are, on the whole, well cast: Jack Elliott Thomson was particularly good at drawing comedy out of his alternate character; Jack Cameron as Lewis had the understated charisma of a leader; Charlie Cussons as John Curlew seemed the most pensively complex of the lot; and Josh Hall established his different parts with a strength that marked him apart as the most competently diverse actor of the lot.

However, despite some individual strengths, this play doesn’t work. It lacks the fast paced humour to make the caricatures and predictable outcomes entertaining rather than obvious, trite and telegraphed. Partly this is because the production is not slick enough – there needs to be less space for thought between speaking lines and doing actions – but partly it is that, despite the fact the cast ham up their parts for laughter, neither the script nor the actors’ delivery has the wit or panache to make the effects really comic. There is no subtlety in the relationships drawn and although this is forgivable (and, presumably, intended) in the first half, the shift into the sombre and darker side of the piece requires skilful development and its crude accomplishment is disappointing. The homosexual relationship between John (Cussons) and Mark (St. Pierre) is drawn better than it could have been, though ultimately I couldn’t quite believe in the truth of it. It felt like boys playing at being gay rather than really creating any sort of actually loving relations – so John’s admission that he loves the other comes out of the blue. Most unsatisfactory however is the handling of the final denouement, which leaves the boys quite astonishingly untouched: apart from a brief bit of puking (a credible initial reaction from Thomson), there is no sense at all that that these boys have been viciously and suddenly thrust into adulthood.

Furthermore, Glenn Chandler has seemingly made no attempt to be imaginative directorially. Although this is in no way a pre-requisite for an effective performance, the cross between exuberant exaggeration and tragic reality is so poorly rendered that some interesting movement or ideas would have been welcome. Even Cecilia Carey’s set feels incomplete, a too-small map tacked inadequately onto an expanse of wall so ill fitting you can almost see the blue-tack.