Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Cast: Abby Melia, Bradley Thompson, Bryony Doyle, Daniel Sebuyange, Dorcas Sebuyange, Emma Burns, Kane Roberts, Lina Sebuyange, Owen Jones, Raven Maguire, Sam Ikpeh, ScottLewis, Toin Otubsin, Paislie Reid.

Denigrate a section of society enough, make them pay for imagined crimes of a group of individuals with sweeping undeserved statements and it is no wonder that they will perhaps meet all your expectations. When that section of society is the young, the next generation of people to whom the world becomes a narrow and twisted version of doomed failure then it is no surprise that sometimes they act the way the papers expect and the Government demands.  The problem with demonising the young is they have the teeth to bite back, they have the surprise and good will deeply engrained in them to show just exactly who the Animals are in society; for it truly is not them.

The expectation of democracy, of fitting into a society that sees you as a problem and not as a useful resource or even at times worryingly as a member of the same species is framed perfectly by the 20 Stories High Young Actors team and through great songs and subtle short monologues loaded with meaning and heartache, with the occasional hopeful dream riding through, each person’s animal revealed itself and the shock of interpretation was enough to keep the action fresh and on the point of intoxicating.

With superb performances by the whole cast and in particular Bradley Thompson, Daniel Sebuyange, Kane Roberts and Abby Melia, who is building upon a superb year of acting experience, Animals is a forceful exploration into the minds of the young, into a section of society that we should be doing everything possible to nurture properly and not straight jacketing their thoughts. If this is a social experiment into how far they can be pushed then through the eyes of such characters as the young lad who achieved all thrown at him at school only to be told there was no job for him at the end of it because he was too over qualified, or the young man who felt as though he had learned more about life from a day’s television than he ever did from books; then it’s fair to say that successive governments have lost the plot entirely.

For 20 Stories High, for Julia Samuels and writer and director Keith Saha, what was shown to the audience will stick with them for a long time, the beast like movements, the grace and beauty in the young as they retold their tales and showed just exactly how they should be perceived, of needing guidance and friendship, not demonising or demoralising were astonishing and frank. This was a lesson handed out by those with the most to lose, it can only be hoped that the lesson is learned by those whose youth has long since departed.

Ian D. Hall