Norwich Theatre Royal, Norwich – until Saturday 27th April 2024
Reviewed by Boo Wakefield
4****
The Boy At The Back Of The Class is a heartwarming adventure story for children, written by the prize winning author Onjali Q. Rauf and adapted for theatre by Nick Ahad. It follows the journey of 9-year-old Ahmet (Farshid Rokey), a refugee from Syria who only speaks Kurdish, as he starts at his new English school. Ahmet, traumatised by his journey to the UK and deeply anxious about his missing parents, is initially mute. He is taken under the wing of Alexa (Sasha Desouza Willcock) and her gang of friends, geeky Michael (Abdul-Malik Janneh), sporty Josie (Petra Joan Athene) and enthusiastic Tom (Gordon Millar) who try to protect him from the class bully Brendan (Joe McNamara) and the bigoted teacher Mr Irons (Zoe Zak). Alexa and her gang are sad that Ahmet’s parents are missing and set about trying to help find them, eventually journeying to Buckingham Palace to lobby the Queen (the book was written whilst the Queen was still alive).
Adults acting as 9 year-olds is not an easy ask, riven as it is with potential pitfalls – but the cast pull it off brilliantly with Sasha Desouza Willock as Alexa, on stage almost throughout, the stand out performance. Over half the audience on the performance I watched were children; from their enraptured and energised reactions they certainly didn’t feel patronised or undersold.
Overall, the play, by its nature, is a story which is told, rather than shown. On stage there are interludes of compelling theatricality, not least at the start of each half with sheets of billowing silk, and supporting sound and lighting (Giles Thomas and Ryan Day), depicting Ahmet’s sea crossing, and Ahmet’s visceral outburst at the end of the first part; but these stand out in contrast to the more deliberate story-telling of the rest of the performance. Lily Arnold’s set is clever; a stripped back school gymnasium wall allows the cast to clamber and swing like children while also enabling slick, inventive scene transitions.
But, make no mistake, this is a play about the world as seen through the eyes of 9-year-olds and is aimed, principally, at a similarly youthful audience, with a steady drumbeat of age-appropriate educational messaging about morality, inherited prejudice, ethics and compassion permeating almost every scene. As a stepping stone for pre-teens into the magic of theatre, it’s hard to beat.