Non-review: Stuff

DISCLAIMER: Not calling this a review because I don't think it’s fair to review amateur productions, let alone school shows. But this is a different kind of school show, part of the National Theatre's annual Connections Festival.

It's years since I last went to one of these performances (I think I was last tempted by an Anthony Neilson offering) but it's probably no huge surprise that what got me back this time was finding out, very last-minute, that Tom Wells had written one of this year's new short plays that the National sends to schools and youth theatre groups around the country. Teachers and students choose the play they want to stage, and of all the various productions one of each play gets a public performance at the Dorfman. Wells' Stuff is the sixth-form play by Bolingbroke Academy, a new-ish London school in their first year of Connections. And while I won't review the likeable kids performing, the play itself shows Wells, unsurprisingly, as a natural writer for teenagers, with his mix of serious subjects and goofy optimism matching the kids' attempts to figure out the world and where they fit in it.

The setup is a surprise birthday party, as a group of 15-year-olds decorate a drab church hall and wait for Anita, the guest of honour, to arrive. Vinny has organised it because he’s had a crush on Anita for a few years, and wants to cheer her up after she had a rough time in her personal life recently, but is, too late, starting to realise that her problems might have been too big and too recent for his gesture to really be appropriate. The other eight kids who’ve turned up to help him are all going through their own stuff, and Wells builds characters quickly and succinctly, with his distinctive style including touches like a plotline getting resolved by the fact that they’re trying to hold the party in the middle of a renowned dogging hotspot. Also typical is the inclusion of a sweet LGBT+ story, as the only two gay boys in their class try to figure out if they actually fancy each other, or just don’t know anyone else. Never mind the optimism in the writing, it’s got to make you optimistic about the current teenage generation that you can write this story for a school play, and the boys will happily perform it.

Once again Wells’ ability to quickly create a large cast of characters and give them good jokes makes me wonder why nobody’s given him a TV sitcom yet; probably more so than usual, as the recent success of Ghosts shows people are definitely up for the kind of heartwarming character-driven comedy that features a teenage girl who “just wants the world to be a bit more like Bake-Off.” Also given how much music is creeping into his work, the TV commissioning people really should hurry up before he writes that big hit musical and his rates go up. On which note, Stuff ends by channelling all those pantos he’s written to provide an audience singalong, so, everybody:

♪Shit stuff happens sometimes
Shit stuff happens
Happens to you
Shit stuff.

♪But good stuff also happens
Good stuff also happens
Hopefully
That’s enough. ♪

Stuff by Tom Wells was part of NT Connections 2019, which continues until the 29th of June at the National Theatre’s Dorfman.

Running time: 55 minutes straight through.