The Chaos That Has Been and Will No Doubt Return

Two boys run on stage, (fake) Ralph Lauren to the waist, Topman to the ankles, Nikes beneath. It’s noughties Luton and the town is underpinned by a collapsing housing market and the rumblings of the EDL and gang violence; but for Lewis and our unnamed protagonist, life is all corner shops filled with vodka and house parties filled with pretty girls. Set during one momentous night, The Chaos That Has Been and Will No Doubt Return unfolds like an urban epic: its small cast of characters freewheeling through streets and council estates, the fizzing freedom of youth caught against the suffocating constraints of British austerity.

There is a weightiness to this political context, yet the sincerity with which the play treats its characters is far from trauma porn; rather, a delirious joy winds throughout. The staging is neat and dynamic, with doors on the minimal set opening like pop-up books – a cleverness that is matched in its script, which bounces with rhythm and humour. Its three-person cast, meanwhile, switch seamlessly between the people that make up this community, accents and physicality slipped on and off like costumes. It all feels irresistible: the energy of its characters, the tenderness between them, the intoxicating snapshot of a place experiencing simultaneous neglect and care. “This was voted the worst town to live by people who don’t even live here,” our narrator says. There’s something so moving in this long overdue reclamation.