Review: Brown Boys Swim, Birmingham Rep

It is not often that, in the first five minutes of a performance, I find my teenage students really laughing along to a whole series of fast and clever jokes (the majority of which I don't understand because the dialogue is peppered with words and references that simply go over my head). It is a great experience, and evidence that this is a great show for students. That opening scene, full of bhangra and jokes, is brilliantly engaging.

Brown Boys Swim is about Kash and Mohsen, two teenage Muslim boys in Britain today. Invited to a pool party with the cool kids, and worried about being able to fit in, they set out to teach themselves to swim. However, into this simple narrative the play delicately weaves not just an exploration of friendship that is as funny as it is moving, but also a succession of intriguing and important insights into race relationships and their impact on the young ‘brown boys’ of the title.