Ilford Boy review – Barbra Streisand teaches teen to smile about the way we are

Donmar Warehouse, London In Danny Lee Wynter’s drama, a quiet boy struggles amid the swirl of his family until a mercurial friend offers him another future Broad Essex accents fill the stage in Danny Lee Wynter’s sprawling family drama.

The busy script from the Black Superhero playwright is crammed with a fractious extended family treading heavily over old arguments, but the production sings when an old friend swans back into town. Set across the 80s and 90s in the shadow of the Aids crisis, this story’s beating heart travels around on tap shoes. Quiet teenager Ted (Leo Whitfield Harris in his stage debut) is surrounded by the loud swirl of his feuding family, with everyone’s rusty views on queerness, race and…