When We Were Brothers
The Underground, Bradford

“BOYS don’t cry,” might have been an alternative title for When We Were Brothers, given could the number of times that phrase is repeated throughout the one-hour play.

In this exploration of male mental health, it’s first uttered when the local bully sits on the chest of seven-year-old Danny (Levi Payne) and it's reprised when pre-adolescent Tommo (Philip D McQuillan) is at his grandfather’s funeral and his Uncle Tommy (“a bullying prick”) jeers at him for being upset. And it’s there when the two blood brothers make a code of conduct, on the list alongside “don’t hit girls.”

Those incidents, delivered in retrospective episodes, mark the milestones in the friendship between the two boys. The thoughtful and academic mixed-race Danny escapes from working-class Bradford to London as a computer science graduate and his experiences teach him emotional intelligence while Tommo, trapped in his home town as a labourer, becomes “cold and quiet” with barely contained rage.