Writer and Director: Montel Douglas
Montel Douglas’s short, punchy play, One Way Out, has a two-night run at the New Diorama Theatre on its way to the Edinburgh Fringe.
There are uniformly excellent performances from the cast of four young actors play. They play Peckham teenagers Devonte, Tunde, Salim and Paul with exuberant energy, giving a sense of real bonding. They constantly break into very funny bursts of dancing – Mateus Daniel has done a great job as movement director – everything from ballroom to breakdancing.
Playwright and director Montel Douglas writes some cracking dialogue – there’s a particularly good joke about a scapegoat towards the end of the play. And the whole thing starts with a clever scene when each of the lads speaks directly to their teacher about some misdemeanour, their very different excuses overlapping. So while white boy Paul (Sam Pote) charms his way out of trouble, Devonte (Shem Hamilton) goes on the offensive, arguing there’s no CCTV evidence. Inevitably the dice are loaded against him and Tunde (Marcus Omoro), both Black British kids of Caribbean heritage. Meanwhile, Salim (Adam Seridji) is a wonderful creation, a Puck-like mischief-maker who despite his desire to make money, clearly has a heart of gold.
The four are doing A levels, Paul sweating over maths for which he has no ability. Douglas doesn’t bother with the details of what the others are studying, and this feels like a lack in the play. So for instance when it comes to university applications, we don’t ever learn what they’re applying for. The prosaic process of filling in a UCAS form doesn’t make for good drama, so Douglas wisely condenses it. But it seems unlikely that all you have to do is enter your name, date of birth and passport number to secure a place.
And this lack of detail continues to be troublesome. Without giving away too much of the plot, would an 18-year-old schoolboy really be taken in for questioning by immigration, especially when it’s clear he has a good support network of teachers and a caring adult who leads the youth centre? And it’s slightly too convenient that the boy’s mother is permanently in hospital with kidney disease, so is never able to provide the necessary documentation.
There is also the occasional piece of heavy-handed didacticism such as when one of them declares that Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has much to say about the condition of people of colour. If we’d been told earlier that the speaker was doing English Literature A level it would have seemed more natural. The pace of the play drops a bit towards the end, and it’s a difficult story to end convincingly.
But the heart of One Way Out is the endlessly endearing way the four boys relate to each other, joshing, romping, dancing and laughing their way through life and finally finding the courage to stand up for their friend in trouble. One Way Out deserves to do well at the Fringe.
Runs until 30 July 2023, then at Edinburgh Fringe
The Reviews Hub Score
Endlessly endearing
