ajhlovestheatre

DEATH OF ENGLAND: THE PLAYS – MICHAEL

DEATH OF ENGLAND: THE PLAYS – DELROY

by Clint Dyer and Roy Williams

directed by Clint Dyer

@sohoplace, London – in repertoire until 28 September 2024

https://sohoplace.org/shows/death-of-england-the-plays

This provocatively titled trio of plays (the third, Closing Time, begins performances next month) returns following a series of premieres at the National and, in the case of Michael and Delroy, also online, the run of the latter curtailed by Covid. Co-writers Clint Dyer (who also directs) have updated the first play Michael, which closed at the NT’s Dorfman the week before the pandemic shut the theatres, by putting in references to Covid and other post-2020 events. Individually these pieces – superannuated monologues really in the case of Michael and Delroy – are vivid, coruscating state-of-the-nation diatribes larded with punchy theatricality and brilliantly performed, but collectively they feel like An Event.

Michael (originally played to great acclaim by Rafe Spall, replaced now by a sweatily compelling Thomas Coombes who proves every bit the equal of his predecessor) has just lost his Dad, an East End flower stall holder who was also a massive racist, and is negotiating grief, guilt, some fairly poisonous family dynamics and the consumption of heroic quantities of booze and cocaine. Coombes brings a formidable energy to the role, his aggressive chumminess covering up deep wells of pain and self doubt. There are shades of Music Hall to the way Coombes’s Michael interacts directly with the audience (arranged on all sides of the giant St George’s Cross that makes up Sadeysa Greenaway-Bailey and ULTZ’s unit set), cheerfully handing out Penguin biscuits and bananas, or getting right up in the faces of aisle-sat patrons while celebrating a football win. He’s dangerous too, especially when intoxicated, pointing out individuals as guests at the family funeral he’s about to ruin, or examining how many of his father’s godawful prejudices he has inherited.

The writing is abrasive but has the salty tang of authenticity and Coombes doesn’t miss a beat, even when Dyer and Williams throw a plot curveball near the end of Michael that strains credulity. In the hands of a lesser actor, this bizarre misstep (no spoilers, you need to experience it for yourself) might seriously unbalance what is otherwise a gritty thrillride of a play, but Coombes is so good he makes it work….just about. The overriding idea that to thrive on our own terms we need to free ourselves from the constraints of our parents’s flaws and opinions is a fascinating one.

Watched together, Michael and Delroy paint a bold, fascinating picture of lives that don’t often get stage time (Delroy as a Black, Tory-voting Brexiteer feels like a particularly fresh creation). The two scripts are full of rage, bewilderment, ruthlessly detailed observation, and rambunctious comedy, they also inform each other (Michael and Delroy are working class Londoners, childhood friends who have become estranged, and use similar vernacular), and both protagonists are a mass of convincing contradictions like, you know, real flesh and blood humans.

Delroy is, I think, the slightly better play. Like its predecessor, it’s predominantly told in flashback, and features a lot of the same unseen but vividly evoked characters. Paapa Essiedu plays Michael’s former friend, about to have a baby with his mate’s formidable-sounding younger sister, and whose life is tossed into chaos and distress when he becomesn the victim of racial profiling. If neither play is necessarily telling us anything new about the inequalities and injustices within the British social and legal systems, setting Delroy up as a home-owning bailif (and he’s pretty self-aware about the amount of sympathy that profession is likely to garner), an individual who’s actively contributing to society, makes it all the more potent and poignant when he’s sidelined and judged purely on the colour of his skin.

Essiedu is dynamite. He brings every nuance and detail of Delroy – his charm, cheek, arrogance, humour, vulnerability, tenacity, despair and finally his hope – to raw, pulsating life. His comic timing and ability to connect directly with the audience are joyous, while his ability to crumble before our very eyes is heartrending. This may be his finest stage work to date.

Played out on the same set (which gets partially trashed during Delroy, in a keen bit of theatrical symbolism), Dyer’s highly charged stagings are further bound together by common visual and aural motifs (thunderous sound by Benjamin Grant and Pete Malkin, and exciting lighting design by Jackie Shemesh). It’s more bombastic than subtle, but it’s an undeniably potent double-punch of theatrical wonder and political fury. You inevitably come out of the theatre determined to come back and see the third play. Riveting, vital stuff.

My review of Closing Time will appear on WhatsOnStage on 29 August 2024