Right, wrong and political correctness

MOGADISHU, Royal Exchange, Manchester
Having been led to believe Mogadishu (the title chosen because it’s a frightening place few of us have been) is all about political correctness gone mad, we find it is really about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder... with political correctness merely a sideline.

Vivienne Franzmann’s Bruntwood contest-winning effort at first comes off as a case-study primer for beginners in social work, with its holier-than-thou teacher whose inability to see sense makes her a target for the school’s psycho. So far, so obvious: cliche lathered on cliche.

But the evening comes to life when the main characters’ agonies and determination start to kick against their so-called better — or in some cases worse — natures.

In an inner-city school playground a teacher, Amanda, gets in the way of a boy’s beating and is knocked to the ground — in the heat of the moment — by a black boy with a history of violence.

Rather than apologise, the boy plays the alpha male among his doltish friends and to offset punishment, accuses the teacher of racial abuse and of flooring him.

The boy’s friends are cajoled into backing his story and the teacher’s behaviour and career are dragged before the usual crowd of social workers, police and case workers.

But it turns out the teacher’s soft attitude is because the boy’s mother committed suicide three years before — and her own first husband did likewise. But in cutting the boy a break, was she letting him down?

In most cases the evening will have members of the audience either on their feet ready to sort the boy out themselves, or persuading themselves that “procedure” brings about the right result — except in this case it doesn’t.

Whatever conclusions can be drawn, the play is powerfully written by Franzmann and directed with tremendous gusto, intensity and attitude by Oldhamer Matthew Dunster.

The acting is generally first rate too: the Exchange has recruited one of its youngest-ever casts — the pupil characters are all aged 18-23 and all terrific — and there is a strong turn from an initially weedy character-turned-tigress in teacher Amanda, by Julia Ford.

But the performances of the night come from Malachi Kirby as the instigator, Jason: all hustle, bravado and dying inside, and even more so Shannon Tarbet as Amanda’s troubled daughter, Becky. A scene in the second half in which she lays into her diffident mother is staggeringly powerful stuff. Tarbet is already an award-winner elsewhere, and it won’t be her last.