‘It is the best play about HS2 you’ve ever seen,’ promises Debbie (Faye Wiggan) in the early moments of ‘Village Idiot’. So, maybe I’m missing the point of this Northamptonshire-set comedy that delves into the divisions between ‘townies’ and countryside dwellers, in which the endlessly controversial high-speed railway threatens to tear the long-term residents of the village of Syresham out of their homes.
It is a loud, brash and indecorous night at the theatre. Be prepared for swears galore and crude humour. But though newcomer Samson Hawkins’s script has some raucous belly laughs, it is padded out with racist gags, casual homophobia and uncomfortable remarks about disability. Yes, the script is self-aware and knows that it is shocking, but after so many quips that send sharp intakes of breath around the audience, it feels like it takes being offensive that one step too far.
Created by the inclusive company Ramps on the Moon that aims to elevate the presence of deaf and disabled voices, its heart is in the right place. And amidst all the distasteful language it has valuable things to say on identity, whose opinions are valued, and what development actually means.
Much like Jez Butterworth’s ‘Jerusalem’, ‘Village Idiot’ has an ethereal, earthy quality. Matriarch and grandmother Barbara (Eileen Nicholas) is tied, almost spiritually, to her life in Syresham and adamantly refuses to be pushed out. Her grandson, Peter (Philip Labey), has other ideas. Since leaving his hometown for university in London, he has decided to sell his soul for an engineering job with HS2. Civil commences within the family, alongside a twisted ‘Romeo and Juliet’-esque love story between disabled youngsters from the village’s two rival families, the Honeybones and the Mahoneys. But, when the landscape around them is about to be ripped violently apart, how can their love survive?
The answer? Well, it is suggested that nature has an otherworldly and unexplainable power of its own. And directed by Nadia Fall, the countryside scenery is grown into a rich, hyperactive character. ‘Here, you’re a king,’ says Barbara - and with it, the sacrality and value of these villages to their inhabitants becomes abundantly clear.
In fairness, the programme notes have a long list of content warnings and lay out the writer’s hope that the insults will make us reconsider a ‘comfortable view of the world’. But, sitting in an audience where people are encouraged to laugh along, unthinkingly, at repeated racism and classism still makes me feel uneasy. This might be a realistic picture of a Brexit-supporting, overlooked pocket of rural England. But in a post #MeToo and Black Lives Matter world, shouldn’t these views be challenged or critiqued? ‘Village Idiot’ feels more like presentation of them, and for all its talk of ‘progress’, I wanted it to display a lot more.