Review: The Boy at the Back of the Class, Festival Theatre Edinburgh

Sasha Desouza-Willock bounds onto the Festival Theatre stage, radiating a very specific, undeniable Scout Finch energy. When To Kill a Mockingbird gets an explicit namecheck in the second act, it really doesn’t feel like a coincidence. As Alexa, she anchors and narrates much of The Boy at the Back of the Class—Nick Ahad’s stage adaptation of the Onjali Q. Raúf novel in a narrative carrying the optimistic, caper-like flavour of a Dick King-Smith adventure, tracking a nine-year-old ‘A-Team’ as they conspire to deliver a letter to the Queen. Their goal is simple: reunite their new Syrian classmate, Ahmet, with his parents. If the Queen can’t do it, no one can.

Finding Humanity in The Boy at the Back of the Class

At the centre of this ambitious plot is Ahmet himself. Serkan Avlik plays him with immense, quiet sensitivity. For much of the first act, he is a fully realised character who barely speaks, telegraphing lived trauma through fearful, guarded body language. It’s a first-class piece of physical acting. Crucially, the horror of his flight across the Channel isn’t milked for grotesque pity. The devastation lands squarely on Alexa instead, and watching her piece together the reality of his loss conveys the heartbreak very powerfully indeed.

This thematic duality works exceptionally well, Ahmet’s systemic displacement running parallel to Alexa’s personal bereavement, and forming a connection that rang entirely true to this orphan doing the reviewing. Because the emotional stakes are established so effectively, the play’s brisk pacing feels earned rather than rushed. It never drags, ensuring you won’t catch the adults checking their dimmed smartphone screens or dozing off.

Dynamic Staging and Nine-Year-Old Comedy

That pacing is helped massively by the lighter classroom dynamics. You quickly forget the adult frames of the cast, swept up instead by Kloé Dean’s sharp movement direction and the ensemble’s slick multi-roling.

At the centre of this ambitious plot is Ahmet himself. Serkan Avlik plays him with immense, quiet sensitivity.

The banter between the kids is great, and the power of a furry lemon sherbet to open dialogue across a language barrier is both amusing and believable. Abdul-Malik Janneh (Michael) and Petra Joan-Athene (Josie) are a hoot as they lock horns in a toxic cold war for teacher’s gold stars. Jonny Warr brings the necessary, jarring volume as the American transfer Tom, prone to enthusiastic outbursts at exactly the wrong time. Then there is Evie Weldon’s Clarissa—a horse-obsessed menace who commands laughs with her prancing gait and an alarming wail whenever she is displeased.

Director Monique Touko and designer Lily Arnold frame all this chaos on a clever quasi-school gym set. Between the climbing frames and inset Olympic rings, it is a highly dynamic space that easily accommodates everything from an unattended classroom riot to a joyous, mimed football match (even if the latter’s sound design needs a little sharpening). Later, Alexa’s mini-odyssey for a pomegranate gives way naturally into a chaotic, highly entertaining tube-and-taxi-enabled assault on Buckingham Palace.

Festival Theatre Scale and The Act One Revelation

However, though the cast has the energy to fill the space, this is a play that demands a visceral, immediate connection with its audience—an intimacy that a 1,900-seat cavern tends to swallow.

This lack of intimacy hits hardest right before the interval. Up to this point in the story, Ahmet’s silence has been his defining trait. When he finally breaks it, Ahad makes the practical choice to grant him a fluent, fourth-wall-breaking internal voice. Literary purists might baulk at this ‘tell, don’t show’ tactic, but it’s a fair and necessary compromise to keep us connected to his thoughts. I suspect the strength of connection this move generates with an audience is much stronger in a more intimate venue, but you can’t question the heart and soul Avlik is pouring into the attempt.

**Sasha Desouza-Willock – Manuel Harlan**

Where the production suffers most, however, is in its portrayal of the antagonists. Natasha Lewis plays Alexa’s mother with deep, grounded authenticity, which only makes the toxic ‘bully teacher’ feel all the more baffling. Saddled with a hunchback and a villainous sneer, she belongs in a pantomime. Max Jordan’s Brendan the Bully suffers somewhat similarly. He is a rather generic menace with a bigoted dad (also played by Jordan), but his eleventh-hour conversion doesn’t stick. He receives no on-stage moment of clarity, nor anything resembling an actual character arc. It just happens.

The Verdict: Compassion Over Politics

Despite these relatively small missteps, this is a strong and obviously timely show given the state of the public discourse on all things immigration. Yet it isn’t out to litigate border policy; this is work which cares about children driven from their homes by war, and the baseline human requirement to treat them with compassion.

…a highly dynamic space that easily accommodates everything from an unattended classroom riot to a joyous, mimed football match (even if the latter’s sound design needs a little sharpening). Later, Alexa’s mini-odyssey for a pomegranate gives way naturally into a chaotic, highly entertaining tube-and-taxi-enabled assault on Buckingham Palace.

It feels oddly nostalgic to see Queen Elizabeth II invoked as an unseen, benevolent hero voiced by Dame Vanessa Redgrave. Furthermore, seeing a Union Jack deployed as a symbol of positive, unifying action on a Scottish stage is a rare, welcome reminder of what the UK is actually capable of when it builds rather than argues.

Ok, so the ending is far too neat, and decidedly too upbeat. A partial eucatastrophe would feel much truer to the complex reality the play so bravely establishes early on. But as a piece of energetic, deeply felt family theatre, it mostly gets it right, finding joy and connection in a compelling, pertinent and meaningful schoolyard adventure.

Featured Image: BATBOTC – Manuel Harlan