Pig Heart Boy at Wolverhampton Grand Theatre Review

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Tue 08 Apr 2025 - Sat 12 Apr 2025

This stage adaptation of Malorie Blackman’s novel is aimed at young adults, but it asks profound questions which will leave both teenagers and adults thinking.

At the centre of the story is the fate of 13-year-old Cameron. When we first see him in the middle of a maths class, he appears like any teenage boy, joking with his friends, flirting with a girl, playing up the teacher. But Cameron’s life hangs in the balance. An infection has left his heart weak, and his only hope for a full life is a transplant.



But when the offer comes, it is from an unexpected source and a surprising choice – he can be given the heart of a pig, and he will be the first person to undergo the surgery. This means not only that it could have potential health risks but it could also attract unwanted attention, so the family is sworn to secrecy.

There are so many medical, ethical and emotional issues at stake here that the production, adapted by Winsome Pinnock and directed by Tristan Fynn-Aiduenu, tells us the story through the eyes and words of Cameron. In doing so, we see the situation from the viewpoint of a teenage boy who just wants a ‘normal’ life. This allows the production to skate over some of the more complicated issues and ask the questions in a simple and straightforward manner.

Immanuel Yeboah is wonderful as Cameron. We instantly warm to him and feel his pain as he wrestles with such a big decision at such a young age. Yeboah ensures the audience feels involved in the story by speaking directly to us, sharing his innermost fears, and even asking us to make our own choices at times. We see him as both vulnerable and yet also powerful; here is a young man capable of making life and death decisions, thinking of others and looking to the future.

And we also feel for the rest of his family. Christine During gives us a mum uncertain of going down this route, the risks just too obvious to a loving mother. Akil Young is the dad who is more willing to give it a try, while Chia Phoenix plays the wise and loving Nan.

When the story escapes, the family’s predicament is suddenly no longer private but splashed across the front pages of all the papers, prompting adulation from some and condemnation from others. Apart from Yeboah, all the cast play all the parts, so we see each actor taking on a host of roles from schoolchildren through to journalists and animal rights protestors through to a flying pig!



The production looks fantastic. Paul Wills’ set and Andrew Exeter’s lighting create an industrial backdrop which features light tubes which change colours – at times creating a neon disco background and at others resembling the pulsing veins leading to Cameron’s heart. So too the stage is filled with television screens which help tell the story by becoming medical monitors on which we see a beating heart or video screens on which Cameron’s face appears.

The music by sound designer and composer XANA and movement by DK Fashola also ensure the show is lively and keeps moving – there is never a dull moment.

Pig Heart Boy leaves us with a host of questions about how medical science is advancing, what that means for individuals and what it means for society. But the show is anything but depressing, and we are left with an overwhelming sense of optimism and the strength of the human heart.

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