Theatre moves fast. Since Bola Agbaje's play first appeared at the Royal Court's Theatre Upstairs in February 2007 we have seen works by Roy Williams and Kwame Kwei-Armah that have similarly explored the tensions of multicultural Britain and destroyed the myth of the "black community". But Agbaje's play still scores through its fresh, first-hand observation and the vigour of Bijan Sheibani's production.
Agbaje's play starts with sibling rivalry and expands to embrace the wider divisions on the streets. Yemi is a brusque south London teenager at fierce odds with his elder, Yoruba-speaking brother, Ikudayisi, newly arrived from Nigeria. But, once they leave their shared bedroom, they find the city crackles with rancour: a Bangladeshi shopkeeper is suspicious of hoodies, black African and Jamaican youths accuse each other of racism and cops stoke up hostility with their stop-and-search policies.
Even if each scene too patently makes a point, Agbaje has an astute eye and ear and offers a different perspective to her male counterparts. Through the confrontational, Anglo-Jamaican figure of Armani, vivaciously played by Zawe Ashton, she implies that young teenage women are often the catalyst for violence. And her final image, in which Yemi dons traditional African attire while jauntily sporting a baseball-cap, implies that it possible both to acknowledge one's origins and assimilate to urban, westernised culture. It is this notion of the potential for dual identity that gives the play its ray of hope.
Sheibani's production also moves along at furious speed much aided by the performances of Tobi Bakare and Tunji Lucas as the warring brothers and by Aline David's choreography. Each scene is punctuated by aggressive dances which confirm that, just as much as in West Side Story, these mixed-up kids are anxiously trying to stake out their own physical and emotional territory.