Hoke's Bluff

It's not clear what sport Tyler plays. It takes place on a court, a field, a rink – sometimes in the same sentence. But he's the best player this school has got, and unless he gets his head straight the Wildcats will lose the big game. With this energetic three-hander, Bristol-based Action Hero have come up with a send-up—sometimes riotous, sometimes wistful—of the high school movie genre, complete with cheerleaders, last-minute heroism, and teenage romance.

This is a loud, in-your-face performance (we are frequently told to "Make Some Noise" by a dancing Wildcat mascot), but the script crackles with poetry. One of the speeches delivered by the hectoring coach (played, like most of these characters, or archetypes, by James Stenhouse and Gemma Paintin at different points) dissolves into a series of unhinged questions: “Did you take something from someone in Sunrise? You ever been homeless in Brilliant Town?”.

Hoke's Bluff is mostly an affectionate deconstruction of the conventions of the cinematic vision of middle America, but a more disturbing kind of high school story is occasionally visible below the froth. At one point the mascot stops dancing, cocks an imaginary assault-rifle, and opens fire on the audience. It's a brilliantly jarring moment, seemingly thrown in just for the hell of it. That's the method here. Action Hero gather all America's defining iconography, load it into a cannon, and blast the lot over the floor of a gym hall. The result sometimes seems unfocussed but is a delirious pleasure all the same.