Junkyard, Theatr Clwyd, Mold

It’s unapologetically in-yer-face, intentionally disruptive and offensive, and perfectly captures that feeling of restless rebellion that all teenagers develop on their journey between childhood and adulthood. Thorne’s uncompromising but searingly truthful book weaves a set of characters that at first push you on your back foot, but by the end you find yourself caring about, even wanting to spend more time with.

Based on real events in his father’s life, Thorne’s plot won’t win any awards for originality. The story is pretty straightforward, like a cross between The History Boys and Goodbye Mr Chips, but the familiar “teacher wins unruly kids round by persevering and believing in them” trope has rarely been modelled as a musical before, and this is where Junkyard really shines.

Rick is a young, aspirational teacher from Walthamstow determined to “save” a bunch of dispossessed kids from Bristol by getting them to help build an adventure playground. He hopes that by working together, the kids won’t wander off into drink and drugs and wasted adolescence, and instead recognise their self-worth and make something good of their unpromising lives. At first, the kids reject his olive branch, ridicule his determination to build a playground out of old wooden pallets and scrap, but over time they relent, and the playground soon becomes a symbol for much more than mere adventure.

Junkyard is a musical for people who don’t like musical theatre. It doesn’t really have full-blown songs like other musicals, not in the sense of having a beginning, a middle and an end, with a rip-roaring chorus that weedles itself into your subconscious. No, Warbeck’s compositions are much cleverer than that, because these songs are the sort that ordinary people compose in their own heads every day. The sort of song you make up when you’re in the shower, or washing up, or walking to work, or waiting for the kettle to boil. They usually stay in your own head, and they have no discernible structure; they just trickle out of our imaginations, and that is how the characters in Junkyard sing. The songs are their thoughts as they think them, complete with sudden stops and changes of mind.

Nevertheless, Warbeck still knows how to match a mean melody to Thorne’s naturalistic lyrics. Junkyard’s abiding lyric – “This is a spider, this is a ship” – is the stealthiest earworm, a mournful but ultimately uplifting tune which is eminently hummable, while the headmaster’s It’s Hard to Run a School is a highlight of the show, particularly when Malcolm (played with idiosyncratic gusto by Kevin McMonagle) gives a rendition dressed as a football referee atop the adventure playground.

Jeremy Herrin’s direction gives the impression of being turbulent and undisciplined, and that’s the key: these kids, with their runaround body language and devil-may-care language, seem so very real up on the stage, like they’ve come through a portal from 1977 just to put on a show. They address the audience directly, swear like troopers, muck about like proper kids do, and are convincingly rude and cheeky to their elders and betters. Supreme among the excellent cast is Erin Doherty as unofficial gang leader Fiz (her real name’s Veronica, but as she was named after tragic alcoholic Hollywood glamourpuss Veronica Lake, she prefers to be called Fiz!). Doherty (who was so very good in Wish List at the Royal Exchange/ Royal Court last year) has an audacious but winsome presence, a cheekiness which aims right for your heart despite Fiz’s rough edges. Events in the play mean she is off-stage for much of the second act, and she’s missed.

The other kids are just as vivid, but some more than others. Enyi Okoronkwo is wonderful as Talc, jumping with nervous energy and self-doubt, gently tugging on the heartstrings to make the character by far the most endearing of the bunch (sadly, his love for Fiz is made a big thing of, then quietly dropped). Enyi’s career is young, but he’s got a long career ahead of him.

Josef Davies is amusingly pugnacious as gurning bovver boy Ginger, the archetypal skinhead in Doc Martens, braces and checked shirt. He’s a soft-centred bruiser who’s quick to make trouble but always for what he thinks are the right reasons. Davies gets many of the laughs in the play, but is capable of expressing Thorne’s depth of character too, especially in the heart-warming scene between Ginger and Talc when the two finally bond. Jack Riddiford is charismatic as Higgy, but sadly isn’t given much to run with.

Making less of an impact – mainly because they are very much secondary characters – are Seyi Omooba as Tilly and Ciaran Alexander Stewart as Loppy, but the actors manage to squeeze as much out of the script as they can, often more through physical performance than the lines they’re given. Loppy is an incongruous savant who doesn’t quite blend in, while Tilly is a physically awkward tomboy who “was born a girl but has hated the fact ever since”. Sadly, this hint at possible gender dysphoria isn’t explored any further, and as a result the character is underdeveloped and overlooked.

Scarlett Brookes makes for a sorry “Dirty Debbie”, Fiz’s older sister, who wanders around on the peripheries of the play, obviously trying to get more involved, to feel a part of what’s going on. Debbie is an outsider who needs some love and guidance before she goes too far down the road her sexually liberated mother has taken, but it may already be too late: she’s pregnant, she doesn’t know who the father is, and it doesn’t seem as though she getting much support. Debbie is a tragic character who we can all recognise from our school days – the needy outsider who follows the wrong path. Brookes is great in the part, and her quiet, contemplative scene with Okoronkwo at the top of act two is a delight.

Calum Callaghan’s hip teacher Rick is lovable and likeable, but also annoyingly agreeable and frustratingly “nice”. He’s a nice guy, who wants to do nice things because he’s “nice”. Callaghan is wonderful in the role, and really sells the character, but again, Thorne could’ve cut a chink in his armour to make him a little more human, rather than super-human.

Lisa Palfrey’s Mum is a gust of giddy energy, the tart with a heart who loves her kids but isn’t paying them the right attention. Palfrey is wonderfully maternal and funny, and the scene with Callaghan where she refuses to forgive Rick for what happens to her daughter is another quiet highlight. It’s odd that the character does a complete u-turn on her feelings about the playground by the end, but then, mums are allowed to change their minds…

Chiara Stephenson’s adventure playground set is beautifully solid yet fluid, ever-changing, and emitting the right amount of ramshackle charm that makes responsible adults in the audience want to shout “Get down off there” whenever someone climbs up high! There’s some inventive, amusing lighting from Jack Knowles, and musical director Akintayo Akinbode’s percussive three-piece band makes the show a raucous delight. The music is played on bed springs and oil drums as well as traditional instruments, and it’s easy to forget the fact it’s being played live as the sound mix is spot on, and doesn’t drown out the performers.

The ultimate message to take home from Junkyard is that we need to give kids a place to be kids. We need to give them the space and the time to just muck about, stretch their imaginations and make mistakes for themselves. Kids were allowed these freedoms in the 1970s, they were allowed to play out at night, to play on the swings and roundabout at the local park without health and safety regulations clamping down on their enjoyment. If they fell off the slide and cracked their head open, it was a lesson to be learned, not a civil case for damages.

Adventure playgrounds made of wood and scrap metal would be anathema to today’s play parks and school yards, certainly without the requisite soft mats and rubber grass. But Junkyard demands that we let our kids be kids again, that we tear off and throw away the cotton wool, and encourage children to stay children for longer. As Rick says, kids think big thoughts, and to some extent we lose those big thoughts when we grow up.

Who wouldn’t want those big thoughts back?

Junkyard runs at Theatr Clwyd, Mold, until April 15th, 2017

Images: Manuel Harman