One Way Out is the kind of play that doesn’t just speak, it shouts. But in the same breath, it leaves you in silence, sitting with a truth you didn’t ask for but needed to hear.
Montel Douglas’s coming-of-age story doesn’t try to be subtle. It’s loud, local, and full of heart. It asks what home really means when a window breaks and your whole life shatters with it.
The show opens with a physical theatre sequence that, I wasn’t expecting to enjoy, but it was done incredibly well. Tense, explosive, choreographed with purpose. The fight unfolds like a dance, and it’s this moment that sets everything in motion. A broken window leads to a suspension. That suspension alerts the police. The police alert the Home Office. And just like that, someone’s life is over.
That someone is Devonte (Joshua-Alexander Williams), arguably the heart of the production. His world collapses over a fight he didn’t even start.
Tunde (David Alade), Devonte’s best friend and the one who actually broke the window, dreams of becoming “something in a suit.” It becomes a kind of mantra, success, respectability, escape. He gets into university, his future intact. Meanwhile, Devonte disappears, casual collateral in a system built to ensure that someone always pays. It’s gutting. It’s real. And it’s handled with just enough restraint that the emotional punch hits you sideways.
Salim (Adam Seridji) drifts between the conflict, steady, soft-spoken, and grounded. His path leads to the family off-licence, and while he doesn’t make the loudest choices, his presence matters. Not everyone is trying to escape. Some people are just trying to stay standing.
And then there’s Paul (Joe Deighton), the token white boy in the group. At first, he’s all comic relief, desperate to be a magician, cracking jokes that land… until they don’t. His story darkens: a violent home, a father who drinks, a future that quietly derails. He ends up on a construction site.
In describing these characters, who are undoubtedly the soul of the play, it’s clear that Douglas leans into recognisable types: the Nigerian boy burdened by his parents’ expectations, the British South Asian Muslim caught between work and identity, the working-class white kid clinging to his hobbies and his friends, the undocumented Black Caribbean teen. It’s easy to dismiss this as stereotypical, but it’s not lazy. It’s intentional. These characters are familiar enough to be recognisable, but they’re given just enough texture to carry weight. They let the message land.
Most people will see a piece of themselves in one of these characters. Douglas’s choices in that sense are spot on.
That said, at times the script leans a little too hard into telling us how to feel. The direct address can feel overly literal, moments where you want to sit with the character, but they explain themselves instead. Still, the monologues carry real power. There’s pain and poetry in them, and they stick.
The lighting design by Jahmiko Marshall deserves its own round of applause. It didn’t just set the scene; it told the story. Warm glows, harsh isolations, slow washes of colour, it mirrored the characters’ inner states with quiet precision. Lighting became memory, mood, and movement all at once.
This is a play that knows exactly what it’s doing. The characters aren’t just tropes. They’re archetypes with blood in them. Characters shaped by systems bigger than them, trying to make it through.
I kept waiting for a happy ending. I didn’t get one. And that was the point. One Way Out isn’t interested in wrapping things up neatly. It’s about truth. About how young Black and Brown British boys, especially those whose families are still entangled in the aftermath of Windrush, are punished by systems that were never built for them to succeed. Sometimes all you want is a place to call home. And sometimes even that is too much to ask.
Now showing at Brixton House, London until the 5th of July. Tickets available at: https://brixtonhouse.co.uk/shows/one-way-out/
Reviewer: Zandra Odetunde
Reviewed: 20th June 2025
North West End UK Rating: