Spear: A school reunion drama in need of some propulsion
Three friends live in the shadow of a schoolmate who became an Olympian medallist.
Smock Alley Theatre - Black Box, Dublin Fringe Festival
★★★☆☆
In popular culture, school reunions are famous staging grounds for old enemies to face-off. It is a place where one-time outsiders come to get their comeuppance, and life-long jerks get exposed.
CN Smith’s intelligent, super-sized play isn’t as neat a survey as we’ve come to expect due to American cinema – the separation of corridor-ruling jocks from passionate nerds. On the athletics field of their old secondary school, several years after graduation, a group of friends get drunk and giddily recall a teenage world that bulldozed sensitive cultural issues, dividing black people and white people, queer and straight, those benefitting from social mobility and those who can’t.