If comedian Mark Thomas seems like an odd choice to perform a dramatic monologue… then trust me, it all makes sense within about five seconds of ‘England & Son’ starting.
During a decade or more of autobiographical, part raconteur, part activist solo shows, Thomas has become a formidable storyteller, flinging himself bodily into his yarns, not just informing us of past events but actively reliving them on stage.
His entrance in Cressida Brown’s taut production of Ed Edwards’s new play is like a volcano erupting: from nowhere he’s suddenly roaring the story how his character – unnamed, but surname England – woke up in a skip one day, and recounting his frantic struggle to get out before the binmen arrived.
Then it’s a frantic journey through the man’s life, from a young childhood spent awed and scared of his thuggish but seemingly supportive ex-soldier father, to troubled teenage years spent in various types of care. Gradually, the story homes in on how the happier first period in his life gave way to the more troubled second.
Thomas doesn’t have the range or nuance of a fully trained actor. But he has apparently boundless energy, bags of empathy and total conviction, and that’s perfect for selling Edwards’s text. He is riveting to the last, and even uses his stand-up skills to do a fun recap of the opening scene when latecomers are allowed in.
It really is a tremendous performance, full of heart, soul and fire… and I just wish it was hitched to a better play. Combining remembrance of characters from Thomas’s childhood with Edwards’s lived experience of prison, it also has an intriguing subtext about how the violence of Empire rippled out through the British working classes. Nonetheless, ‘England & Sin’ unavoidably ends up feeling like misery porn. The relatively ambiguous early section gives way to a mounting litany of horrors inflicted upon Thomas’s character that feels first cruel and then just a bit silly - Edwards could have made the same points better if the grimness had been dialed back by half. The playwright himself comes across as sadistic.
Thomas is good enough that you shouldn’t let any of that put you off. But it would be a shame if this were a one-shot acting gig for him: with a better play, he might perform miracles.