CAN’T WAIT TO LEAVE at Jack Studio Theatre

★★★½

“grazes idly and widely on ideas it can never properly explore”

There’s something wrong with Ryan. You can tell by his haunted expression, his furious contempt and his presence at A&E. He’s having a bad night.

There’s an empty box on the form where he can write in his symptoms but, better still, why not tell us, take us right back to the beginning, or at least the beginning of the end.

The point being: he can’t wait to leave. A&E, London, which he hates, and his current life, which he hates even more.

Teenager Ryan is living a life on the margins. Cheap flat, cheap booze, cheap encounters, always poor, cadging off mates and strangers.

He’s not a Londoner by birth or inclination but his big brother Ben told him that, if he wanted to make it rich, he had to come to the capital. But Ben is an accountant, doing well for himself, with a set of boarish colleagues and an influencer girlfriend. Any minute now they’ll be settling down, having babies, hashtag living their best life, which seems to bother Ryan more than it should.

Ryan is living a very recognisable London life. He has two GCSEs so he cycles for Deliveroo, and work is interspersed with empty encounters thanks to Grindr and his good looks. He lives in Hounslow with three flatmates where he occupies his time having rainbow hangovers. Everything’s not quite right and now the 19-year-old is on the radar of predatory Richard who fancies some young flesh.

Ryan isn’t that bothered about Richard but he’s less bothered about himself so it all evens out in the end.

Zach Hawkins, who plays the raw and rudderless Ryan, is blessed with an open face and a blank expression on which to layer these experiences. He has the stage solo for 75 minutes to tell us Ryan’s story and is a powerful and captivating presence.

He brings the teenager to life with a blend of puzzlement and self-loathing but Ryan never has enough self-awareness to help us mine for answers. His bleak liaisons mean nothing, and he can’t even rouse himself to nihilism, so he just pinballs between hook-ups, sleazy bars and neon kerbsides where he slumps, drunk or high.

He never strikes it rich, never strikes it lucky. He’s too young to know what’s real and what’s just passing through. Because of this, the production – written and directed by Stephen Leach – grazes idly and widely on ideas it can never properly explore. That means the A&E trauma, when it comes, is just another numbing chapter in a formless and chaotic life.

Ryan is hollow, feckless and stroppy. That Hawkins manages to engage us, despite Ryan’s armour of wanton indifference, is a tribute to the actor’s earnest persistence, demanding we should care when moving on is much, much easier.

CAN’T WAIT TO LEAVE

★★★½

Jack Studio Theatre

CAN’T WAIT TO LEAVE at Jack Studio Theatre

★★★½

“grazes idly and widely on ideas it can never properly explore”