Theatre / mark thomas
REVIEW: England & Son, Tobacco Factory Theatres – ‘Incredibly powerful, gripping and strangely enriching’
Theatres like plays to have intervals. As veteran stand-up comedian, political firebrand and now actor Mark Thomas points out, this gives the audience two opportunities to spend money at the bar.
The problem with playwright Ed Edwards’ award-winning piece England & Son is that its length and narrative intensity don’t really allow for a break in the middle. So to get around this problem, the first half of the evening is not actually England & Son at all.
Instead, Thomas uses his finely honed stand-up skills to deliver a work that he has developed in conjunction with the recovering drug addicts with whom he and Edwards do workshops in Manchester. A series of character portraits capture what might be called the funny side of drug addiction, rendering the horrific things that the former addicts have experienced in anecdotes awash with humour and charm.
is needed now More than ever
After the interval (and the associated bar takings) comes the heavily contrasting main event, England & Son: an austere tale of an abusive father, the torments of the penal system and the hope-deprived nihilism of young men with nothing but crime and drugs to fill their lives. The narrative skips to and fro across the timeline of the main character’s bleak life story in a cascade of fragmented snapshots, sometimes funny and often agonising. It’s a montage of life in the underbelly of Thatcher’s Britain painted by Hieronymus Bosch.
Hope flickers, only to be snuffed out by… what? Simple tragic fate? A flawed character? Or the cheerless inevitability that becomes baked in as a boy progress from children’s home to Whitelaw’s ‘short sharp shock’ to prison, stopping off in crack houses and Wetherspoons on the way?
Thomas’ performance is a tour de force, singlehandedly delivering a cast of characters ranging from the violent father to the caring social worker. He delivers them all with passion, and the belief – as anyone who has seen his stand-up shows will know – that it is ultimately the system and the people that run it that strip ordinary people of their dignity, their motivation and ultimately their soul.
England & Son is not an easy watch, despite its leavening of humour (including the moments when Thomas briefly breaks out of character to use his stand-up skills for some perfect ad libs), but it is incredibly powerful, gripping and strangely enriching. As the audience left, one punter captured the mood perfectly. He heaved a big sigh and muttered just two words: “Fucking hell!”
Mark Thomas in England & Son is at Tobacco Factory Theatres on October 17-19 at 8pm. Tickets are available at www.tobaccofactorytheatres.com.
All photos: Alex Brenner
Read more: Mark Thomas: ‘Silliness is a wonderful weapon against the powerful’
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