What's Wrong With Angry?

When Patrick Wilde's tale of a love affair between two teenage schoolboys burst on to the stage back in 1992, it certainly created a stir. At a time when the age of consent for homosexuals was five years above that for heterosexuals, and Section 28 held the classroom in its clutches, What's Wrong With Angry? was an important response to Britain's repressive gay laws.

But sixteen years on, in the context of adoption rights and civil partnerships, Wilde's script fails to make the same impact. Rather, it paints a crude picture of homosexual love that is dated and excruciatingly one-dimensional. Where once the play's original shock factor may have helped conceal its stylistic flaws, in today's post-Brokeback Mountain world, these become glaringly obvious.

Wilde himself directs this shorter production of his play, which makes its hotly anticipated return to the UK after an absence of 13 years. Unfortunately, the poorly written script and predictable plot are only accentuated by the overblown acting of the teenage cast members, who manage to turn even the more rounded characters into simple stereotypes. Oliver Jack and Christopher Birks, who play the teenage lovers, are particularly to blame, and their hammy performances lend the production the feel of a bad school play.

The playwright's direction does little to help, his heavy handed approach making the most basic scene seem contrived; “freeze-frames” and dramatic lighting might have worked well in a more mature production, but here such techniques smack of drama school pretensions.

Though Wilde himself remarks that life for homosexuals in the UK was “very, very different” over a decade ago, homophobia in schools remains a serious problem and is certainly something that theatre should endeavour to tackle. But dredging up a play from the 90s that has long since passed its sell-by date is simply not the best way to go about it.