Dark themes lurk within a rustic idyll of teenage love

In February 2001 an outbreak of foot and mouth disease across the UK plunged agriculture and tourism into crisis.

More than six million cows and sheep were slaughtered. nightly news bulletins showed apocalyptic images of burning livestock.

Sales of British meat were halted, rights of way across land were cordoned off and events such as the Cheltenham Festival cancelled. The GenAmy. eral Election was postponed by a month and, by the end of the crisis, it had cost the UK economy an estimated £8billion.

But it’s the personal cost behind the headlines that former Fringe First award winner Emily Jenkins, who grew up in a little village in Gloucestershire, concentrates on here in this touching, tender, dark comedy which she also directs.

A rites-of-passage, coming of age tale, it focuses on two 13 year-old outsiders, Bobby and The idyllic landscape they grow up in – ‘sleepy Cotswold town-market square-river-fish shop-old church famous windowsco-op-farm shop-fields and cows’ – is straight out of Cider With Rosie.

But not everything is as rosy and idyllic as the green and pleasant land around them. ‘Aimless Amy’ has retreated into herself after the recent death of her father. She’s also attracting the sleazy attention of her mum’s new boyfriend. The autistically challenged Bobby is constantly teased and tormented by his peers, and his home life is no great shakes either. Together they form a moving, gently blossoming country alliance. And as the local farm suffers an outbreak, cows begin to burn, livelihoods are threatened and families fracture, even fatally, the young pair emerge as unlikely champions of a community whose centuries old way of life is threatened.

Jenkins’ script is littered with humour and evocative, poetic pastoral flourishes in this exploration of friendship and childhood bonds. It’s refreshing change to see a British play broaden its horizons beyond the city skyline. Pleasance Courtyard until Aug 26