Justin Amankwah. Photo: Jasmin Simmons
If he is a good boy, does the right thing, turns the other cheek to injustices, then goodness will surely run him over… and he will get the bike he dreams of, the BMX bike mum has promised him. Justin Amankwah is the 13-year-old Good Dog of the title, and in an extraordinary and compelling monologue that holds our attention for nigh on two and half hours, brings us into another world.
This is a chronicle about growing up in a multi-cultural community. Poverty is a given, the norm; as are the bullies, the sad, the surly, the defeated and the downright deluded characters who people Good Dog. The play is set in north London, but it could just as easily be here in Australia. Good Dog’s cheery and savvy optimism holds him together for the best part of the play but the constant drip of deprivation and injustice is going to turn a person in the end.
We meet the neighbours through Good Dog’s benevolent eye. Trevor Senior is teaching Trevor Junior cricket, not just for recreation but in the hope of keeping his not overly bright son out of trouble and just possibly providing him with an out from a bleak future. Then there are the smoking boys, a disaffected gang of losers, who upset Trevor Snr by their very presence (and their cigarette butts); the what-what girls (delightfully named for the lack of vocabulary, ‘Wot? Wot?’) who hang about, relieving their boredom by petty theft from the corner store, run by ‘Gandhi’, a middle-aged Indian who is desperately trying to prove himself to an autocratic father. There are the kids who give Good Dog a hard time at school, Desmond and Massive Martin, bullies of the first order. To get away from them Good Dog hides in the library, where he meets another outsider, Jamilla, who is not pretty and has BO. Mrs Blackwood has a smile for everyone, even – at first – the woman who is stealing her husband away from her. As for Good Dog’s mum, well she’s not happy at all.
Good Dog doesn’t comment, doesn’t make judgments. He leaves that to us. He observes it all from the balcony of his flat, and he does it with humour and gives everyone the benefit of the doubt. He’s not stupid, but he believes in his fellow man and that goodness will prevail.
“No one said being good was ever good to be easy.” And it’s not.
The audience knows what Good Boy does not, at least not in the beginning. It will only be a matter of time before an accumulated weight of injustices and hurt will drive him – and others – to fight back, to “take the hit and pass it on”. Kene’s play, and Amankwah’s delivery of it under Rachel Chant’s direction, slowly rises into a visceral roar of pain and anger, yet never loses its humanity. We’re with Good Dog all the way, even when the way is violent. What would we do if we were in his shoes?
The narrative is cogent and powerful and Amankwah’s performance is extraordinary. It is a story that will stay with you. It is a story that is happening now in disaffected communities everywhere. This Green Door Theatre Company in association with Bakehouse Theatre Company is on until November 16. Tickets $32-42. Don’t miss it.
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