Hearts is a new short play by Luke Norris, staged by Pangbourne College as part of the National Theatre Connections programme for young actors. Set in a cramped changing room, it tells the story of Sacred Heart Football Club, a struggling youth team. While their best players keep leaving to join local rivals Brentfield, tempted by the princely sum of £20 a week, those that are left are more focussed on their tangled love lives than on the beautiful game. Meanwhile, the teammates' various on-off girlfriends and their friends spend as much time hanging around the changing room as the boys, talking booze, parties, makeup, and the inevitable gossip about who is, or isn't, doing what to whom.

Norris's script is fast-moving and very funny, expertly capturing the interactions and ever-changing friendships among a group of teenagers. The opening scene in particular is a picture-perfect rendition of changing room banter between teenage boys, made entirely believable by the cast. Similarly, Act II, in which the girls gossip and bitch while sheltering from the rain and waiting for the boys' match to finish, rings entirely true. Boys and girls come together, in every sense, at the end-of-season party in Act III, and director Rebecca Atack keeps the action fast and furious as relationships form and dissolve in the blink of an eye or the punch of a fist.

The production has been carefully put together, with attention to detail that includes the walls of the changing rooms adorned with graffiti relating to the events of the play, as well as some very realistic fake vomit. The aforementioned walls were a little wobblier than ideal, particularly as the play involved a lot of slamming of, and hammering on, doors, but as the group were sharing the theatre with three other plays on the same day, the set builders can certainly be forgiven.

Overall, ‘Hearts' was hugely enjoyable production by a talented young cast.