STORIES FOR BOYS at Drayton Arms Theatre 9 - 20 June 2026
'Funny and clever but overloaded' ★★★
Where would art be without the twin poles of love and death? These strands weave through the performing and visual arts from the year dot and forever. Our relationships with these subjects, their absence or presence, will shape all our lives for good or ill.
Stories For Boys, is an eat-as-much-as-you-can theatrical buffet that explores many ideas around love and death through a dizzying number of courses and flavours.
Written by Kieron Barry (Numbers, Spy for Spy) and directed by Hope Wishart (A Microscopic Odyssey) this piece uses an array of approaches to tantalise the tastebuds. The cast of six uses performance, physical theatre, dance, song, puppetry and tableau vivant to convey some big ideas. The multiple references to literature and philosophy in this layered, post-modern piece make a good game. How many references can you spot? Double points for Shakespeare or Beckett. In some ways, the whole piece is performed in ironic, inverted commas.
We start with a reenactment of a car journey in the dead of night and our cast of six become windscreen wipers, doors, and a passenger. Then, in a panoramic long shot, a body becomes a landscape, tiny torches show two cars heading towards each other over the curves of a woman’s body. There’s a terrible accident and a fatality. The doors and windscreen wipers transform into pallbearers as a body is carried away and lives are changed forever. It’s an audacious and impressive opening.
Somewhere in the buffet of illusions and surreal scenes is a narrative thread about a donkey and a fish, asking questions about love, life and death. The shadow play and puppetry that represents them is charming and sweet but overwhelmed by everything else. There’s a lot going on around them; it’s no wonder the donkey and fish are having an existential crisis. Why are they here? At one hour forty straight with no interval,
Stories for Boys demands a great deal of the audience. It's funny and clever but overloaded and in need of dramaturgical input.
There is much to admire in this crafted, choreographed piece which represents a great deal of talent. The lighting design by Barnaby Booth is imaginatively and sensitively conceived and realised. Enza Kims’s set and costume design is cohesive and resourceful. The formality of the costume design by May Kelly - formal Nehru collared suits—juxtaposes with the absurd comic tone of the piece. Despite the headlining themes and its laudable, experimental approach, this is a buffet that feeds the intellect rather than the soul.
Photography: Erika Sviderskyte
Stories for Boys at Drayton Arms Theatre until 20 June
CAST
Adam Barlow - Player One etc.
Lewis Blomfield - Player Three etc.
Florence Dobson - Asso
Agatha Elwes - Basso
Samuel Ferrer - Player Two etc.
Thelma Solea - Player Four etc.
CREATIVE TEAM
Written by Kieron Barry
Directed by Hope Wishart
Robert Taylor - Executive producer
Enza Kim - Set Design
Barnaby Booth - Lighting Design
Helen Skiera - Sound Design
May Kelley - Costume Design
Arista Abbabatulla - Assistant Director
Catalina Diaconescu - Stage Management
Lisa Bain - Production Manager
Sean Laing - Co-Production Manager
Paushali Banik - Casting
Maryann Wright - Press
Salene Jang - Graphic Design
Olga Tarnopolskaia - Programme Design
Paul Major - Site Development
Modge Tait - Producer
Lily Alcock - Co-Producer
Cassie Devlin - Co-Producer
