Review: Broken Biscuits (Hull Truck Theatre)

One of Tom Wells‘ strengths lies in creating quirky, nice, young characters in situations that may be unusual, but are easy to relate to. Broken Biscuits is the latest in his line of gently amusing, emotionally truthful comedies and the mix works again, though it’s a rather more effortful success than some of its predecessors.

In the summer holidays between GCSEs and college Megan summons her friends Holly and Ben to her garden shed where she has installed a drum kit bought at the local hospice shop. Ben is quietly gay, no academic and hoping to study fabrics at college. Holly is more intelligent, a computer geek and unversed in the ways of social intercourse, mainly because she never even reaches the first step with boys – saying hello.

Megan has decided that the three of them will stop being losers: she herself is overweight and complains that people never even remember who she is. They will, she demands, become cool before they go to college, by forming themselves into a music group to enter a contest at the start of term. They have some qualifications: Holly can play a few notes on a flute, Ben has learned the chord of G on the guitar and Megan sometimes succeeds in hitting her target on the drums. There is a week-by-week countdown, but mercifully Wells avoids the usual climax to such plays – winning or finishing second. The play ends with a charmingly disarming song.

The problem lies in the character of Megan. Larger than life and never uninteresting in Faye Christall’s energetic and committed performance, she is written more from the outside than her gentler friends. Both writing and performance sometimes lack subtlety and her hectoring of her bandmates, while barely wielding a drum-stick herself, becomes repetitive, as do her non-specific demands to be cool.

For much of the earlier part of the play, her fellow-actors have the opportunity to establish characters by response and reaction, while Christall nobly carries the weight of the dialogue. When their key scenes arrive later, both are able to deliver from a strong character base. As Ben, Andrew Reed undemonstratively finds his way to becoming a better person and more himself and Grace Hogg-Robinson makes a beautifully judged, if rather small-voiced, stage debut as Holly, also working towards self-knowledge.

James Grieve’s touring production for Paines Plough and Live Theatre is precise and unfussy, with Lily Arnold’s meticulously detailed shed a perfect setting. Matthew Robins provides suitably rocky music between the short scenes and also sets Wells’ words for the most delightful feature of the play: the mundanely self-revelatory songs that Holly and Ben come up with and deliver dead-pan. And, finally, it’s all together for, "Don’t worry if you’re fat, don’t worry if you’re gay." Wells’ message, as always, is of tolerance.

Broken Biscuits runs at the Hull Truck Theatre until 5 November and then tours the UK.