Review: More Heat than Light, The Room Above

“If a discussion generates more heat than light, it doesn’t provide answers, but does make people angry.”

Eighteen-year-old Alex (Ashley Hodgson) prowls the living room of his recently deceased grandmother’s homely, memory-strewn house in south-east London. It’s a few hours before Nan’s funeral, at which Alex is going to be saying… something; it’s also a few hours after simmering tension between Alex and another family member came to a violent climax.

Over the next 60-odd minutes of this gripping one-man show by Bristol Uni graduates Kite Theatre, Alex (a visceral performance by Hodgson, all flailing gestures and artillery rounds of Sarf London streetspeak) tells the very unusual, often moving story of his colourful, passionate family across the last four generations, and how the deeds and passions of the past have cast a long shadow over the (somewhat broken, and definitely shrinking) family of today.

Two qualities make this play work. First is Hodgson’s turbocharged performance, by turns cocksure and vulnerable, alternately king of the walk in his corner of Deptford and a vulnerable manchild grieving a beloved relative. Then there’s writer Tom Titherington’s brilliant script – both the fascinating, erratic and totally believable antics of the four generations, and the way all this complex and troubled family history is filtered through Alex’s intelligent, febrile consciousness. He’s a young man about to make the leap into manhood – and he’s not at all sure he’s made all the safety checks.

This family, meanwhile, is cloaked in claustrophobia and recrimination, but there are also moments of clarity, affection, laughter, epiphany. Alex’s accounts of fumbling his way through a South London adolescence, with their hints of psychogeography, are also compelling.

Script and performance conspire to create, in Alex, a character with whom you quickly feel great empathy: a beautifully drawn picture of youth, uncertainty, that quicksilver oscillation between cockiness and fear. There’s humour, too, in Hodgson’s deft changes of delivery, from Alex’s whipcrack SE8 dialect to his ancestors’ BBC newsreel accents.

Two other elements also add greatly to the atmosphere. Emer Clark’s set couldn’t be more authentic and immersive. The walls are lined with sepia family portraits; the old gramophone with its stack of 33s and 78s sits just upstage from the armchair from which reminiscences and recriminations have flowed; and, there’s also a handsome sword, cue for a vivid tale from the family annals.

Speaking of 78s, the original music composed by Alison Cowling and performed by Alison and Tom Manson also adds greatly to the atmosphere: on-the-button simulacra of early- and mid-20th-century music hall, plus a healthy injection of flamenco (Spain, a place of heroism and exoticism, features heavily in the family history).

Hodgson’s performance captivates throughout, and at the end, as the lights go down on Ashley slumped uncertainly in his grandfather’s sagging armchair, there’s a tantalising sense of uncertainty about his future. Sharply written, passionately performed, this is a compelling portrait of a young man on the cusp (for better or worse) of adulthood – and of how our acts can impact for generations.

More Heat than Light continues at The Room Above, The White Bear, St Michael’s Hill, Bristol until Saturday, Oct 22. For more info and to book tickets, visit www.facebook.com/events/557962221201965

Read more: Preview: How to Win Against History, Wardrobe Theatre