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.
