Barely contained in one of the bunkers tucked alongside the Pleasance’s main Courtyard, a first-time production from three young mates blazes with more energy and dazzles with more insight than many far bigger shows by more established companies at the Fringe. It’s a real discovery, by a trio of actors/dancers/writers who clearly have plenty to say, and the expertise in storytelling and delivery with which to say it – very powerfully, and very movingly too.
It no doubt helps, too, that Heart Beats Strong draws so clearly on personal experience: its three chopped-up storylines came from a challenge that the three members of newly formed Kickdrum – Alfie Wickham, Kai Porter and Noah Manzoor – set themselves, to write something they’d be scared to say out loud. The results – said out loud, and enacted with some furiously energetic choreography too – touch on class and privilege, race and prejudice, family and friends, sexuality and loneliness, as three lads tread a precarious tightrope between childhood and adulthood in three very different 18th birthday celebrations.
Interestingly, their storylines – based on the performers’ own teenage diaries – never intersect or overlap, though ideas and images ricochet back and forth between them. Most gratifyingly, however, Heart Beats Strong never deviates from its 18-year-old viewpoint, with all the uncertainty, bravado, vulnerability and swagger that that involves. There’s no sense of judgement or moralising here, nor of opportunities wasted or the revelations of retrospect: the show feels like theatre lived and experienced in the moment, with all the furious, whirling immediacy that that involves. Not that there’s anything remotely chaotic about the trio’s crisp, immaculate production: lines are wrung for laughs or pathos, moves are elegantly traced around the tiny performing space, and the hand-held lights function beautifully not only as sources of illumination but also a stand-in props.
At a time of endless hand-wringing over a crisis in young masculinity, toxic influences and apparently inescapable misogyny, Heart Beats Strong offers a remarkably compassionate, joyful and positive corrective, but one that’s also frank and unflinching. Young guys might mess up, get confused, overstep the mark or get ground down by frustration, but there’s so much to admire and inspire in this new company’s electrifying and deeply moving celebration of youth and hope.
