Beats is the closest you’ll get to a mid-week rave in North Oxford. Strobing lights, thumping music and, in particular, a beautifully crafted script help the seated audience feel that they are part of a party. When the piece premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe, it began at 11pm.
Beats is a coming-of age story set amid the early rave culture of 1990s Scotland. We follow 15-year-old Johnno McCreadie on a one-night journey from playing Zelda in his bedroom to his first, conscious-altering rave. Writer Kieran Hurley, sat with microphone behind a desk, plays frustrated anyteenager Johnno. He also plays Johnno’s mates, his pale, fretting mother and the young policeman, Robert, who will help to break up the rave.
What sets this apart from other coming-of-age stories is the lyricism of the intricate, interwoven script and the strength of the performances. Hurley can switch between accents and moods in a flash, humorous and poignant by turn. The monologues pulse with poetry and the scene in a car, searching for the rave, is particularly sharp. Beats also works as a period piece. The details are spot-on: Johnno lives in a mist of Lynx Africa, the soundtrack includes Autechre and The Shamen.
From start to finish, the play raises big questions. The 1994 Criminal Justice and Order Act made it illegal for people to gather to hear ‘amplified music which is wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats’ (a description which could apply to tonight’s performance). But can music ever be a criminal act? Do ‘feral’ youth need taming, or is this arresting their imaginations? Can you be ‘one’ with a crowd? On-screen projections mix scenes of field raves with scenes from the student protests at Millbank in 2010, encouraging us draw connections between ecstatic dancing and riots.
The characters' fates converge, but the narrative strand surrounding Robert, the policeman and son of a former steel worker, feels less defined. The music features house classics and piano breakdowns. Yet the programme promises ‘techno’ – a later genre with quite different origins (and culture). But these are minor gripes about an exhilarating and highly recommended show. Like Johnno, I stumbled out dazed and blinking.