Dogs on the Metro review – all stations to teenage angst

Live theatre, Newcastle
The Tyne and Wear Metro is the setting of Emilie Robson’s evocative new play about two teen friends but something darker rumbles beneath

Emilie Robson’s insinuating new play is structured like random journeys on the Tyne and Wear Metro – or “hopping the metty”, as teenagers Jen and Dean would have it. The two are childhood friends who like to head to the end of the line to people-watch at the airport, or to walk the long way home to South Shields by bailing out at Bede, Jarrow or Hebburn.

They tell their story – or, as she insists, Jen’s story – as mixed-up memories, linked by a collage of subway trips during which two young people find it easier to talk about dogs on the Metro – a whippet in a jacket, for instance – than say what is really on their minds.