PIG HEART BOY OFFERS A FUNNY, RAW, AND AT TIMES SURREAL RETELLING OF WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A CHILD EXPERIENCING ILL HEATH

By Madeleine Anderson | Press Invite

Malorie Blackman’s Pig Heart Boy is a staple of the English primary school bookshelf. I remember reading it in year three. The pages were worn, and some were falling out. It had clearly been read many times, and I was hooked from the first few lines.

Now, the story has been brought to the stage in Tristan Fynn-Aiduenu’s adaptation, currently playing at Southwark’s Unicorn children’s theatre. It centres around Cam Kelsey (played by Immanuel Yeboah), a boy who receives a pig-heart transplant that leads to a rush of attention from his classmates and the media.

When entering the theatre, audiences are met with the sound of a heady heartbeat pumping around several bright red megaphones across the stage. The speakers are connected with red pipes that pulsate with light at each beat.

Told through the eyes of Cam, Pig Heart Boy offers a funny, raw and at times surreal retelling of what it means to be a child experiencing ill-health. True to Blackman’s writing, this stage adaptation centres on the voice of children, inviting audiences to pay attention to Cam’s health condition, but also his identity beyond his health, like his friendships and love of swimming.

Cam’s asides offer opportunities for the audience – the play is aimed at young teens – to hear first-hand from a sick child. More could be made of Cam’s regular speeches into the audience, and based on the reaction from the younger audience members, there would be the appetite for increased audience participation here.

Whilst the production smartly captures how Cam is treated by his classmates before and after his heart operation, the individual relationships get lost on the audience, with the overall tone falling too quickly leaving on humour or excessive (almost comic) sincerity, often falling just short of an appropriate balance of the two.

Dr Bryce (played by Tré Medley), the wacky scientist who oversees Cam’s operation, is a strong example of this. Dressed all in white and rarely without sunglasses, he’s a classic ‘smooth operator’. But, a heavy reliance on jokes means his discussions of animal rights – a key theme in Blackman’s book – are left overshadowed and under-explored. Whilst a firm crowd pleaser and a charismatic performer, Dr Bryce’s character lacked the depth that could have been achieved with a stronger retelling of Blackman’s book.

Throughout the performance light and sound are used to play with time, to freeze and to reverse it, creating an at times dream like pacing that mirror the moments of reflection and anxiety that Cam returns to throughout the play.

Pig Heart Boy is playing at the Unicorn theatre until 22 February. It is showing at the Playhouse in Sheffield from 27 February to 15 March and touring until 14 June.

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Photo Credit: Ali Wright