A Good Clean Heart (Pontio, Bangor)

The youthful energy and colour in Mared Swain's production of A Good Clean Heart is intoxicating. The story focuses on two brothers who were split up at a very young age by social services, who rehomed the youngest, Kevin, in Wales, while the eldest, Jay, stayed in their native London. The two lost touch (Kevin, renamed Hefin, was only a toddler anyway) and it's many years later, when Hefin is all grown up, that the boys reach out to reconnect.

It's Willy Russell's Blood Brothers but with less schmaltz, fewer songs and more relevance. Where Russell's hugely successful and sentimental musical takes class as the divide between the estranged brothers, here playwright Alun Saunders takes race and geography. Hefin is a white middle-class, well-educated and reasonably well-adjusted lad from South Wales who speaks two languages and comes from a stable, loving family who adopted him, whereas Jay is a black man who's had a tough upbringing and has ended up in trouble with the law as a result of falling in with the wrong crowd.

One of the biggest laughs in the play (and the one question the audience is desperate to get answered!) is how Hefin and Jay can be brothers if one's black and the other's white, but the simple answer is that they share a white mother, but Jay had a black father. There's plenty of humour to be mined from the boys' social differences, whether it be Jay finding Hefin's Welsh accent amusing, or the language impenetrable, or Hefin struggling with the near-the-knuckle existence Jay has in London, where a wrong look or a broken curfew can lead to life-changing catastrophe.

The story moves along at a rattling pace, sometimes foregoing credibility due to timing constraints (for example, it feels like Hefin falls just a little too easily and quickly into taking drugs, turning his back on his family in Wales just a little too readily), but it's a compelling narrative which provides a platform for some blisteringly good talent in actors Oliver Wellington (Jay) and James Ifan (Hefin). They have enormous charisma and embody these characters with charm and wit. The characters are lovingly written, but the actors truly bring them off the page and place them in the audience's hearts.

Both characters are well-drawn and believable, not merely ciphers or stereotypes. The actors have a natural rapport which reflects the characters' brotherly connection, and proves that things like skin colour and social background, which some people see as barriers, are immaterial when it comes to family. These boys have a personal history, one that Hefin barely recollects, but the love Jay has for Hefin is apparent, and delightful to see portrayed in a modern play. Too often brothers are depicted as warring egos, but the truth is that a brotherly love is a strong bond which should not be underestimated.

Swain's direction utilises Elanor Higgins' lighting and Zakk Hein's innovative projection wonderfully, allowing the play to be fully bilingual. The initial burst of bilingual repartee can come across as a little disorientating to non-Welsh speakers are first, as you try to stay on top of who's saying what and where the translation will appear, but this is no bad thing, as it puts the audience into a frame of mind to expect anything (it also makes you appreciate Carl Davies's simple but beautifully designed bus stop set more too!).

Saunders's script - which won him Best Playwright in the English Language at the 2016 Wales Theatre Awards - is bristling and punchy, bang up to date and relevant to today's youth. It's always a joy to get a laugh out of people saying textspeak aloud (lol), and the brief moments of synchronised movement by Ifan and Wellington (by Jessica Williams) reinforces the fact that despite their separate upbringings, these boys are brothers with much in common. There's also a fantastic scene where the boys and their birth mother (portrayed by Ifan and Wellington with splendid effeminacy) bond over a karaoke machine. Music has no colour or class, and to witness Ifan performing Dizzee Rascal's Bonkers rap in Welsh, and Hefin and his birth mum belting out Sonny and Cher's I Got You Babe, is a heart-swelling triumph.

A Good Clean Heart is a lovely story, told at a suitably breakneck pace by a writer at one with his subject (Saunders himself adopted birth siblings with his husband) and performed by two extremely talented and charismatic young actors who surely have great things ahead of them. The presentation is a swirling, frenetic but heartfelt piece which challenges the audience to see past cosmetic differences and recognise that, to paraphrase a lyric by one of the most successful African-American singers of all time, the blood inside ourselves is inside us all.

The stats
Writer: Alun Saunders
Director: Mared Swain
Cast: James Ifan (Hefin); Oliver Wellington (Jay)
Performed at Pontio, Bangor, October 5th to 6th, 2016. Performance reviewed: October 6th, 2016

Links
A Good Clean Heart on Neontopia website (retrieved Sep 27 2016)
A Good Clean Heart Autumn 2016 trailer (retrieved Sep 27 2016)