King Hamlin begins with a teenager’s funeral. We learn of the boy’s stabbing as his friends sit chatting and making condolence cards for his mother. It is clear from this scene, and its lack of surprise, that this is how boys die on this neglected London estate.
“There’s too much slashing in this hood,” we are told, and Gloria Williams’s play looks at youth gang violence from the perspective of the boys at risk of being drawn in. Boys is the operative word here: the drama’s central characters, Hamlin (Harris Cain), Quinn (Inaam Barwani) and Nic (Andrew Evans), are more boys than men despite the knives and the posturing.
We see how they become embroiled in county lines drug trafficking and gang crime out of poverty – having to “step up” in deprived households – but also peer pressure and oppressive notions of masculinity.
All three central actors give excellent performances: Cain shines in his title role, capturing the inner conflict of an intelligent, code-switching teenager who is desperate to escape the gang culture that has taken the life of his father but still finds himself hurtling towards it. Barwani emanates misguided innocence as his closest friend while Evans, as an aspiring gang leader, is a tightly drawn fist of adrenalised, unnerving energy. There is just one adult among them, Hamlin’s mother (Kiza Deen), who is rather too lightly drawn.
Lara Genovese’s set design is all-encompassing with graffitied walls and floor and tension is built up well as Hamlin becomes enmeshed in the web of crime and violence. There are switches to dream or fantasy, some more effective than others, and occasionally the dialogue speaks in blunt messages: “I’m society’s child,” says Nic, sounding more like a sociologist than a teenager.
Williams’s script is best in its granularity during the boys’ more casual moments: their banter, jokes, tenderness and social media pressures pinging in the backdrop of their lives. However, information or backstory is sometimes too heavily delivered in the form of memories shared between them.
This doom-laden world has more than one teenage funeral but the play ultimately offers hope – and a potential way out for the likes of our noble young King Hamlin.
• King Hamlin is at Park theatre, London, until 12 November
