Happy Meal review

It’s 2003 and 14-year-olds Alex (Sam Crerar) and Bette (Allie Daniel) have just met online playing an Antarctic-themed game dressed as penguins. As you do. Well, as teenagers certainly did two decades ago. It’s the start of what is to be an enduring friendship spanning nine years and which is full of missteps, mishaps and FFS. Or “foot in mouth disease”, as Alex puts it.

At first it seems that Bette is the uber-confident one, as befits someone who has been the UK’s Under-16 Penguin of the Month for five consecutive months. “Your penguins bring all the boys to the yard,” jokes Alex. But while the quieter Alex is soon opening up to Bette about who he is at a time when being trans was still cloaked in silence, nerdy Bette takes refuge in online worlds where everything feels safer and less scary.

It takes time, misunderstandings and not a little heartbreak on their parallel – but individually conducted – journeys from cis to trans as they grapple with who they are, who they want to be, and proclaim it to the world. Will they eventually find their seat on the bus together? You bet.

Over the years, Edinburgh’s Traverse has played host to a number of iconic romcoms, from David Greig’s Midsummer to Liz Lochhead’s Perfect Days. This one takes its place alongside those classics. It’s a play in which trans people demand to be watched and are watched: in a good way and a safe space, which isn’t always the case. It makes your heart go hoppity-hop as you yearn for Alec (as Alex becomes) and Bette to find their happy place together. Over a Maccy D’s, of course. It helps that Crerar and Daniel are such a joy, both full of snarky teenage humour and as vulnerable as new-born kittens.

What’s so endearing about this show is that it has no side, even though everyone involved knows exactly what they are doing. It is what it is, and it’s proud of wearing its playful, cartoonish vibe on its sleeve until the moment when something more urgent and heartfelt starts to emerge. It’s as if writer Tabby Lamb has taken all their teenage fantasies and made them real. Or IRL, as Bette would say.

That’s not to underestimate the emotional subtlety of the writing, which cunningly nestles beneath the litany of retro reference to internet jargon and pop culture including Buffy, Neighbours and emo-favourite Patrick Wolf’s set at Leeds in 2006. The latter provides a pivotal and devastating moment in a play that lands just so, greatly helped by Jamie Fletcher’s delicate direction. It’s a moreish and irresistible hour that takes us to a very happy place indeed.