"The Detention". Pilch

In The Detention five high school students have been given Saturday detention, and none of them knows what for. Their mysterious teacher Mr Fairton informs them that they will stay there until they know why. Over the course of the play each teenager reveals a secret that transforms how their classmates view them. But will it be enough to release them back into the weekend?

If the structure of The Detention sounds familiar, then it should. It's based squarely and unashamedly on John Hughes' era-defining school drama The Breakfast Club, with Mr Fairlot adding a soupcon of Inspector Goole from An Inspector Calls. But where The Breakfast Club ultimately rejected the social stereotyping of schoolchildren, The Detention accepts those stereotypes, and uses them to confront a number of issues our youngsters grapple with during their formative years. It's The Breakfast Club if written by Jacqueline Wilson.

So our five misfits - a class clown, a nerdy bookworm, a spoilt mean girl, a football jock and a wannabee Goth - jointly uncover experiences of sexual assault, cheating, concealed homosexuality, eating disorders and gender identity, and they end up accepting each other for who they truly are. It's an issue-led smorgasbord with a happy ending.

The play was written by undergraduate Madi Bouchtar when she was just sixteen years old, and it has been performed at several schools, along with workshops encouraging discussion of the issues raised. And let's be unequivocal about this: for a sixteen-year-old child to create a piece of drama as cohesive, mature, gripping and responsible as this, is truly remarkable. It promises an amazing career as a playwright.  The plaudits Bouchtar received when she first produced it were thoroughly deserved.

At the same time, I have to be honest and say that The Detention's day is done. It feels like Theatre in Education. It's designed to serve a purpose for audiences the same age as its characters, and those characters also demand to be performed by actual teenagers (as they originally were), not students in their twenties. The way it tackles its protagonists' problems is ideal for secondary schools, but in the context of Oxford students it feels just a bit too simplistic. I can certainly understand Bouchtar dusting off her first runaway triumph for one last hurrah, but she and her audiences have grown up a lot in the last four years, and it's time to write a new, great play.

Even if its subject-matter is aimed at a younger audience than a university crowd, the play is still great fun. The characters are big and boldly drawn, and the talented company play teen versions of themselves with glee and energy, all exaggerated impatience, consuming embarrassment and tearful confession. And the 80s soundtrack, as well as paying due homage to The Breakfast Club, took me right back to my own school discos (when most of the issues raised by this play were buried so deep most of them didn't even have names let alone therapies).

I hope Madi Bouchtar builds on the phenomenal promise of this play with something new, fascinating and mature. It's great to give it a last outing, but, as a former teacher who invigilated many a detention myself, I would say to this play, 'Time's up. Well done. You can go home now.'


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