How can I beat this rap?

As far as Charlie is concerned, his only qualification is a 'GCSE in GBH'. Banged up for assault and barely literate, the teenager's favourite self-penned rap features the line 'what else is there for me to be?'. Quite a lot, believes Ash, a former English teacher with whom Charlie is to share a cell.

Painstakingly, Ash teaches Charlie to read and write, to believe in his potential as a rapper, and encourages him to change his attitudes towards others: women are more than just sex objects, Ash argues.

Basic undercuts its feel-good narrative with a slyly awful ending: we want to believe in Ash and Charlie's mutually beneficial friendship, despite its clichés, but it isn't to be; Charlie ultimately refuses to see beyond his blinkered thinking.

Franko Figueiredo's static production accentuates the flimsy, repetitive structure of Lynn Greenwood's script. Furthermore, the play frustratingly seems to accept the prevailing notion that young black teenagers are out of control because of absent fathers and an inherited sense of hopelessness, rather than challenge it.

Yet it boasts a firecracker performance from Femi Oyeniran. As Charlie, Oyeniran switches between childlike vulnerability, lethally wired energy and alarmingly unfocused fury to get to the play's nub: that life can too often resemble a prison to black teenagers - inside or out.

Claire Allfree Until May 5, Hackney Empire Studio, 291 Mare Street E8, Tue to Sat 7.30pm, £12, £9 concs. Tel: 020 8985 2424. www.hackneyempire.co.uk Rail: Hackney Central

Basic
Hackney Empire Studio Theatre
Mare Street, E8 1EJ