Flesh and Bone
Soho Theatre, London

IF THE current predominance of public school-educated actors grates and you fret that working-class voices are being lost, and if that deters you from going to the theatre, Flesh and Bone is for you.

Set on an East End council estate, there’s a whiff of Shameless about it but as if directed by Steven Berkoff. Here, it’s actors Elliot Warren and Olivia Brady who direct, with Warren also writing the piece. The language is certainly Shakespearean — or at least Shakespeare-ish — yet just as the torrent of words starts to swirl into purple prose, it takes a dodgy swerve into in-yer-face Cockerney.

At the outset the five characters may seem stereotypical, with geezer Terrence (Warren) constantly up for a fight — he must have strutted from his mother’s womb. Girlfriend Kelly (Brady), a doe-eyed hard case, is a survivor who yearns for the high life, or at least a meal at Prezzo once in a blue moon.

Terrence’s brother Reiss (Michael Jinks) is another hard man with few prospects and less money, spliffing up every night and doing little with his days. His dealer Jamal (Alessandro Babalola) prowls the stage, more beast than man. And Granddad (Nick T Frost) is seemingly just a gap-toothed comic turn.

And then, from the bravado and antagonism, truths emerge. In a stream of soliloquies, deftly written and outstandingly performed, secrets are revealed and inner worlds revealed.

The final scenes are electric and there’s something of a Henry V crescendo, though it’s the battle against gentrification that rallies this tenant band of brothers and their feisty sister. They know they’re at the bottom of the heap and they know why. They’ve had a guts-full of it all and they’re fighting back, knowing better than anyone that it could be a futile skirmish in the larger scheme of things. But it’s magnificent, nevertheless.

This joint venture between Unpolished Theatre and Eastlake Productions went down a storm at the fringe festivals in Edinburgh and Adelaide and, on this showing, it's not hard to see why. It ends soon, don't miss.

Runs until July 21, box office: sohotheatre.com