Brown Boys Swim, a new play from young local playwright Karim Khan, introduces us to Mohsen (Anish Roy) and Kash (Varun Raj), two adolescent South Asian boys growing up in Oxford. Friends since early childhood, their secondary school years are now winding down and they are forced to consider their imminent adulthoods and diverging paths. When Kash gets them invited to the social event of the season, their popular classmate’s pool party, they embark on a shared mission: learn how to swim.

Black and Asian communities in the UK still face significant cultural barriers that prevent them from learning to swim. Tragically, this is reflected in the higher frequency of drownings these communities face - the show specifically references a graffitied tribute on the Donnington Bridge to one boy, Hussain Mohammad, who drowned in the Thames in 2015.

The beginning is a bit of slow burn, as it drops us right in the middle of the character’s lives, before the invite to the pool party even takes place. Initially, I found this overwhelming, but by the end of the show, this decision makes sense - it creates a depth and understanding of the characters necessary to pull off what the play ultimately has in store.

The lighting and sound design is excellent, subtle when it needs to be and then strikingly powerful. The use of fog and sound effects to evoke a public swimming pool works better than it has any right to.

Kash and Mohsen have both developed their armour against an unjust world: Kash’s is his personality - a swaggering jovial class clown, Mohsen - quieter and more earnest, is his grades. But the constant, subtle presence of racism takes its toll on their friendship.The show is in no small part an ode to friendship. It feels fitting that this is a two-hander, as the two characters debate the Islamophobia surrounding them as well as choices of swimwear and girls, and places to go for late night munchies. They feel disapproving stares the second they step shirtless into the swimming area at Blackbird Leys leisure centre. They suffer a run-in with a security guard that will leave you quietly enraged. Mohsen plans to attend Oxford - both the ‘best university in the world’ as he sees it, and his hometown. Kash is looking into an BAME apprenticeship scheme in Manchester, the existence of which Mohsen sees as a cynical, box-ticking exercise that pits minorities against one another.

But beneath a constant barrage of teenage taunts and dick jokes, you feel profoundly how much stronger Moshen and Kash are together, and that they couldn’t be having these conversations with anyone else. Khan beautifully captures the way half-belonging in multiple places demands endless grace and endurance from these kids and pushes them into a brotherhood. There is also a universal adolescent tension captured: between being so restless and ready to escape the monotony of childhood, and trying to savor and make sense of the little time life-as-you-know-it has left. This double urgency means the party represents more than just a chance to fit in with the cool kids: it’s a culmination of their teenage years.

For the vast majority of the production, the two cast members never leave the stage. They get changed behind a large rectangular, pool-tiled box, which, alongside two wooden benches, gets repurposed as countless different props throughout the many scene changes.

This unfussy quality to the set design allows a brash energy and warmth to build throughout. As with real best friends, conversations between the two leads are dropped and picked up casually over days - the writing rings very true for never trying to wrap up a scene too neatly. It can be challenging to make philosophical conversations land gracefully in dialogue, but Khan’s sharply observational writing makes them feel effortless.

To talk in too much depth about the end of the show would be to spoil it, so I’ll just say it builds to an emotional crescendo that left me breathless and deeply moved. This is a crisp, dynamic show, beautifully acted. I’d recommend it to anyone. Alongside producer/director John Hoggarth, Khan, Raj, and Roy have crafted a gem.