The End Of Eddy
Church Hill Theatre, Edinburgh

EDOUARD LOUIS’s novel is about growing up gay in a working-class community in northern France, but you wouldn’t guess the literary roots of Eline Arbo’s adaptation, so perfectly does it work as a piece of theatre.

It has the epic quality of Brecht — an archetypal story that might happen anywhere, whose scenes play out with didactic clarity, coupled to an uninhibited depiction of teenage sexuality worthy of Frank Wedekind.

It is also a masterpiece of spare contemporary theatre that requires its four Dutch actors to share the main role, as Eddy discovers not just his sexuality but also his dawning class consciousness and to bring every other role to life as believeable portraits from the harassed and cynical mother and broken alcoholic father to homophobic gangs, gay teenage orgies, brothers, girlfriends and schoolmates.

“I have no happy memories of my childhood,” begins the tale, and the ease with which the young cast step into these roles, and into that of the autobiographical narrator, brings an exhilarating command of their art to this unrelentingly painful story that keeps it buoyant and astonishing.

And they can sing. And they can play as a band. And they are not coy — the sexually explicit scenes are no holds barred and yet a finely judged balance of physical action, symbolism and the same measured and brutally honest narration.

The triumph of the production, alongside the technical skill and the bitter humour, is the way it understands and articulates these scenes as symptomatic of economic oppression and works through the argument in its own terms and language.

Ultimately, in such a community, the site of conflict for every man or woman, gay or straight, is the body itself. Everything else can be taken from them.

The show ends with escape into itself as a brilliant piece of theatre played by young actors. Eddy is miraculously delivered into the liberating environment of a bourgeois theatre school, but ambiguity reigns.

Is this wish fulfillment, and has he survived at all? The sweetness is served up with lashings of sarcasm.

An outstanding production with a uniquely brilliant cast.

Don’t miss!