BWW Reviews: GOTCHA, Riverside Studios, March 3 2011

In the 70s, the great British post-war social engineering projects were running out of steam - the housing estates that had given roofs to those displaced by the slum clearances had spawned their own problems and comprehensive schools were driving up school fees and property prices more than academic achievement. "Gotcha", Barrie Keeffe's television play, is adapted by Jagged Fence for the Riverside Studio's stage some 34 years on, and today's audiences will see a drama that damns politicians, educators and, well, us by being as relevant now as it was then. 

On his last day of school before being sent into the outside world with no qualifications, no recommendations and no self-esteem, a boy takes two trysting teachers hostage in a store room before summoning the headmaster and locking the door again. With the tables turned, the boy - anonymous, since, in the swirling humanity of a big comp, none of the three teachers had learned his name (though they had judged him in his bleak report) - takes his revenge humiliating them, forcing them to act out parodies of the physical and psychological torture they had visited upon him. While there is a heavy-handedness in a PE teacher doing press-ups, the headmaster's fatuous assurances that the boy can progress from the ignored sink stream to brain surgeon and centre-forward for Manchester City hits home every bit as hard for kids whose expectations are being raised by the same false prospectus in 2011. There's a pigeon-racing grandad, a batty (and neglected) grandma and a big brother like Billy Casper's from Kes to flesh out the authenticity of the boy's working-class background, but his eloquence stretches credulity, even in a system where bright kids without the starched shirts were missed as often as spotted.

As the boy, Jake Roche is a plausibly weedy no-hoper suddenly seizing his chance to fight back and Emily Dobbs' young, vulnerable teacher convinces in her growing understanding and sympathy for her captor - Skelmersdale's Stockholm Syndrome sufferer. David Morley Hale and Jefferson Hall do what they can with underwritten caricature roles, but the play is really about The Boy and The System, offering plenty of critique, but not many alternatives.

As you would expect from Keeffe - an ex-teacher himself - the portrait of The System that emerges rings true. I should know - I was there - but I was one of the clever kids, against whom the boy rails in his rage, his envy and his ignorance. My brother - two years younger, same school - left with the same "advantages" as the boy, lost in a system too big and complacent to be bothered. He did okay - rather better than okay if truth be told - but plenty like him didn't and they still aren't two generations on. The "Gotcha" of the title is as much about the boy's lack of social mobility as it is about his imprisonment of those he holds responsible. 

Gotcha is at the Riverside Studios, Hammersmith until 19 March 2011.