Jules Chan’s Fringe debut is a deeply personal monologue about one man’s struggle to navigate the dual identities of growing up in England as a first-generation Filipino immigrant. In his struggle for belonging, Chan’s protagonist, Boy, is guided by two figures who stand as distant icons of his fully realised selfhood: his older brother and Shakespeare. As the play follows Boy in his maturation from an unruly high schooler in the Midlands to a skint twentysomething in London, episodes of his adolescence are recast as scenes from a Shakespearean tragicomedy.

At times the melodrama is so overwrought it muddles the narrative with seemingly traumatic moments, like a knife crime incident, that are forgotten as soon as they are performed. Yet the broader narrative of Boy’s search for his brother still manages to get lost amongst these tangential threads. At its worst, English Ako is a meandering melodrama which gives way to physical comedy that doesn’t always land and some awkward moments of a cappella singing. Though at its best, the play is an intelligent contemporary interpretation of Shakespeare that casts the bard’s archetypes as passing characters in Boy’s life to symbolically reconcile his English-Filipino identity. There is promise here. 

English Ako, Space Surgeons’ Hall, until 23 August, 9pm; main picture: Cam Harle.