All We Ever Wanted Was Everything
Bush Theatre, London

YOUTH, energy, exuberance and action fill this enjoyable and perceptive 90-minute view of the Britain we live in. Writer Luke Barnes, director Paul Smith and composer and musical director James Frewer combine to galvanise the audience in what's hugely accessible, all-round entertainment.

All We Ever Wanted Was Everything is produced by Hull-based company Middle Child, whose aim — to attract working-class audiences and those who feel alienated by the word “theatre” — is spectacularly achieved. The music is fast and compelling, the scenes short and pithy, the setting the authentic world of Hull and the characters so true to real life you wonder why they so rarely feature on stage.

The story is of a boy, a girl and an asteroid with the latter — portrayed in human form by Alice Beaumont — being on course to wipe out the world.  The pair, born in 1987, meet during 1997’s Cool Britannia, pass through 2007’s Broken Britain and the “war on terror” and meet again in the 2017 of Brexit and Trump.

Through it all, they abandon dreams, fail at relationships, give up hope and only at their final encounter remember what it means to be alive. Stop wanting, start living, be kind and seize the day is the message as the asteroid collides with Earth. It’s a real call to arms.

Driving the whole piece is Marc Graham as the manic, sweating, kohl-eyed MC. He jokes and taunts, howls with passion, sings like Liam Gallagher and finally screams to the audience: “Live your life. I dare you,” like a proselytising whirlwind.

Meanwhile the multi-talented cast all play instruments and sing, rave to the ear-splitting music with infectious abandon and have moments of quiet and moving perspicacity. It’s as much like going to a gig as to the theatre.

This is a play which celebrates ordinary people and shows us how to value what we are and not what the world would have us be. At a time when wealth and fame and enviable success are all we are taught to want, its conclusion is uplifting.

And it shares the rarely articulated common experience of failing at something we’ve wrongly been persuaded we want in the first place.

Easy watching, never a dull moment and truly inclusive theatre.

Runs until November 24, box office: bushtheatre.co.uk.