I Hope My Heart Goes First

When it comes to Glasgow’s globetrotting company of “teenage performance-makers” Junction 25, the pre-Fringe hype juggernaut has been foot to the pedal on warp speed. Securing a spot in the Made in Scotland showcase sealed their inclusion on countless critics’ “ones to watch” lists.

It's a shame then that the end product—a reprisal of their excavation of love and its foibles, I Hope My Heart Goes First—is decidedly uneven.

A young teen, Adam, strides to centre stage to announce that their show contains the group’s reflections on love as unearthed through “songs, cheesy films, experience and the shape of the heart”.

What follows is a series of cod lectures, impressions, skits, songs, dances and dialogues which loosely probe around the fringes, but never dare settle on a conclusion of what love really means for them. The cultural reference points (When Harry Met Sally, Madness, The Carpenters, The Beatles) occasionally jar, as if they’ve been beamed in from Planet Adult, and some visual metaphors (including the cast, one-by-one, jumping up and down to represent a heartbeat) are drawn-out and extensively repeated.

There are exceptional moments. A Meg Ryan/Billy Crystal sketch is eerily accurate and hilariously parodied; an ensemble rendition of Justin Timberlake’s ‘Cry Me A River’ explodes with chest-puffing attitude; and Robyn’s ‘With Every Heartbeat’ is reproduced as a barebones ballad of room-silencing beauty.

Junction 25 are insistent they shouldn’t be pigeonholed as “youth theatre”, yet I Hope My Heart Goes First too heavily relies on the cast’s ample reserves of youthful innocence and cutesy inquisition to turn out something oddly twee. A more honest attack on the truth, their truth, and Junction 25 will be far closer to the heart of the matter.