Britain is the sum of broken parts: its people split into myriad pieces. Race, class, opinions and experiences separate us. It is fitting, then, that Clint Dyer and Roy Williams’s three-part study of the state of the nation and what it means to be British is divided too. The decade-long project began its life in 2024 as a ‘microplay’ commissioned by The Guardian in collaboration with the Royal Court. Now it storms into the West End, with three of the original four stories (‘Michael’, “Delroy’ and ‘Closing Time’) being performed in rep this summer (the fourth, ‘Face to Face’, is a film).
Created during a time of tumultuous British history, it spans the Covid and Brexit years, and asks the pertinent and forever timely question of what it means to belong. Individually, each of the plays, which have already been seen at the National Theatre, grapple with race relations in working-class, austerity Britain.
‘Michael’ and ‘Delroy’ were performed side by side on press night (‘Closing Time’ will arrive at the end of August). They’re both steeped in the wildly diverse attitudes and pockets of life that exist within contemporary working class England. Across the plays, we’re introduced to characters from different generations and heritages, and the ‘death’ of the title means an independent thing to all. What unites them is a shared experience of loss, pain and confused identity.
‘Michael’ centres on a white, drug-fuelled and booze soaked lad about town, as he comes to terms with the death of his racist father. Set around his funeral, it requires an actor to spit out its story – and Thomas Coombes is more than up to the task. One minute he audibly wills himself not to cry, the next he roars in fury, cursing anyone that crosses his path. It is a horror show in part, as Michael seethes with worthlessness. His father’s death is the last in a long series of disasters: job losses followed divorce, his mother always disappointed in him. But Michael is reluctant to take any blame, naming is wife and sister ‘bitches’, with his manhood unwilling to be dented.
In the second part we hear from Delroy – Michael’s best friend of years and the boyfriend of his sister Carly. Here furiously played by Paapa Essiedu, it is the stronger and fuller of the two plays. Recounting the day of his daughter’s birth, we listen as Delroy describes how he was unfairly taken in by the police and after a lifetime of assaults, finds the words to scream out in pain. It is a vigorous, loud and exhilarating act from Essiedu, who leans into the audience for jokey asides as he goes.
Later in the run you’ll be able to watch all three plays in one day, although they undoubtedly work as standalone pieces. But, there are undoubtedly things that tie them together. Sadeysa Greenaway-Bailey and Ultz’s blazing St George red cross stage design gives the stories a shared, seething, home. Dyer’s direction cleverly uses props in the place of people. At its best, the script feels like poetry. Words are sung out in repetition, phrases are echoed as memories in future scenes.
Back to back, the plays make Dyer and Williams’s analysis of Britain’s complications prick even deeper. The men are both stuck in states of contradiction: the difference between their thoughts and feelings are articulated throughout. Their present merges with their past: with a flash of light the language switches from narration to furious action.
The world is so vivid that if there’s a weakness here it’s that I longed for more insight into the side characters – there is the sense that this is a series that could roll on, eternally. Full of rage, love, pride and deep bewilderment, these are stories that are grown authentically on British soil and are desperate for a stage.