Pig Heart Boy - the beat goes on, on tour!

★★★★

Would you rather live a limited life with a "ticking time bomb" beating in your chest, or be the first to have a heart transplant from a pig?

Pig Heart Boy, by Ali Wright

It's the impossible question posed to thirteen-year-old Cameron and his family.

Adapted for the stage by Winsome Pinnock from Malorie Blackman's before-its-time novel (the first real procedure happened 25 years later. "Called it," was the author's only comment), Pig Heart Boy examines the controversial procedure and the consequent aftershocks.

The boy, who has spent his life “wrapped up in cotton wool,” has only two wishes: to live long enough to meet their baby sibling, Alex, and to win a game of daredevil dive against his friends. Together, they scale the climbing frame set (designed by Paul Wills), laced with LED pipe lights, arteries snaking from a central speaker. With Andrew Exeter's lighting design, they pulse blood red, ocean blue, and mellow yellow, almost replicating the synaesthesia of the turbulence of teen-hood.

There's a Caribbean flavour throughout the lively piece, uplifted by XANA's contemporary disco and soul score. Joyfully, it's full of life. The company multi-roles a cast of vibrant characters around Immanuel Yeboah's central, relentless performance as Cameron. We meet a smooth-talking, dapper scientist, the BFF who shares a secret handshake, a model airplane-loving dad, a teeth-kissing grandmother who makes the best fried dumplings, and even a personified diva pig, Trudy.

Director Tristan Fynn-Aiduenu plays with time. Stacked television screens pause, rewind, and fast-forward the action, with DK Fashola's expert movement direction working in tandem. The world moves in slow motion, time is taken for deep dives and bated breaths, and given to impromptu dance breaks. Light, sound, and movement really come together. It's visceral. Suitable for ages nine and up, Pig Heart Boy has more than enough to keep audiences, and their adults, entertained and engaged. And it's not just the look and feel of the show, but the script, too.

Despite covering heavy topics (we're talking empathy, morals, ethics, etc.), the family uses the only kind of British humour you can imagine to keep on keeping on. There are pig puns a-plenty, breakings of the fourth wall, and shared sayings from the matriarch that have the adults in the room laughing in relation. It's not at the sacrifice of the story at hand, the undercurrent is still strong, and at points, each central character is swept away with grief, anger, upset, and fear.

A story of rejection: from friends, from family, from your body itself, Pig Heart Boy has an abrupt ending. You can only hope that the beat goes on.