Growing Pains

It’s perplexing that a show with such artistic pedigree could be so abysmal. Dramaturg Matthew Landers’ A Dog Called Redemption won the Manchester Evening News award for best play, while actor Tom Gill is currently resident artist at the Roundhouse in Camden. The two pair up for a shockingly self-centred, inane regurgitation of male angst.

In what is hopefully a partial fictionalisation of Gill’s life, his script is about, yes, growing up. Tom moves to London from Manchester and experiences all the professional and emotional heartbreaks that the English capital can throw at him. He rants on about shagging and snorting, occasionally bursting into horrendous 8 Mile-style rap solos about boozing. He even plays the guitar – because he’s sensitive, too!

It’s so cringeworthy, pointless and badly judged that it might simply be an attempt to bait its audience into mass aneurysms. Tom's character is misogynistic and flirts with racism, ableism and plainly offends on every level. The point of this could be to show that his upbringing is to blame, but if that’s the case, this play is woefully off the mark and totally inept at establishing any kind of deeper meaning.

It’s like watching Luke Wright stripped of his Loachian political storytelling; Starred Up robbed of its fearsome exploration of masculinity and paternity; Kate Tempest bereft of her mythic majesty. Even if we were to permit its heinous content, the basic story and dramatic configuration are so limp and clichéd that it virtually disintegrates. Growing pains? More like torture.