The Sh*t – Bush Theatre, London

Writer: Kenny Emson

Director: Alexander Ferris

There is an inevitability to a story like The Sh*t, which is to say, it’s obviously not going to end well. But that doesn’t mean the story shouldn’t be told, and if anything, it should be told louder and more frequently until the story inevitably ends happily.

Eric is a youth support worker, trying his best in an underfunded, undervalued sector. He fears for his own job whilst trying to create an environment of stability for young offenders. Daniel is one such young offender, resistant to help but desperate to get out of his trouble-making environment.

Kenny Emson’s script plays out how you would imagine: at first there’s some tension between the two, Daniel finding it hard to trust that Eric actually cares, Eric finding it hard to prove it what with diminishing resources. But Eric manages to soften Daniel enough to break through a little. Then there’s a set-back and then a reconciliation. It’s a well-known dance, told tens and tens of times before, but it’s more pertinent than ever: Not only is it a broken system relying largely on data and box-ticking, it’s also the only system we have and it’s being destroyed.

It’s so easy for a story like this to become unpalatably cheesy and cringing with the wrong casting, but Lladel Bryant and Dillon Scott-Lewis have a great chemistry, and the nuances of their characters feel honest; Scott-Lewis suddenly losing his temper and then deflating just as quickly with a ready cheeky grin, and Bryant latticing a true nature of openness and guilelessness with a severity learned from past bad experiences.

Scenes are spliced with a sternly choreographed moving of furniture accompanied by a dramatic soundscape and an overhead circuit of train track LED lights flashing aggressively. It’s hard to know exactly what this lends to the story, except perhaps showing the miserable repetition of these encounters. But it just feels like a slightly clunky way of dividing up scenes.

Sara, Eric’s boss, is a disembodied, pre-recorded voice (Samantha Béart). On the one hand, having just Eric and Daniel on stage maintains an intimacy, but on the other hand a floating voice of authority gives the impression that she’s the enemy, without empathy, only caring about filling in forms. But that’s not what the script is telling us. Other than that, Alexander Ferris’s clean and simple direction works to the story’s strengths, keeping the focus on this one ill-fated relationship that represents thousands of others.

This does feel a little like a public service announcement in that it’s ultimately didactic, more a desperate appeal than something to casually chew on the way home. But when a story feels so urgent, it’s hardly the time for subtlety.

Runs until 23 April 2022