Mark Thomas is on the floor, curling up in the foetal position crying out an expletive in emotional agony. He is not being the familiar comedian Mark Thomas but the actor – still, the scream is raw and the pain tangible. It demands comfort when none is to be had, answers when none will suffice, but most of all for the story of that swearing howl to be told. And thus England & Son opens.
A one-man play written specifically for Mark Thomas to perform, playwright Ed Edwards leans in to Thomas’ passion, physicality, and deep compassion – and the performance sings from it. He roams around the full performance in the round space, bounding as a cocky adolescent, and open raw as PTSD wakes him screaming in the night.
Fully formed characters are drawn from folk in Mark’s childhood and Ed’s lived experience in jail, so clearly portrayed that a change of gait or broadening of the shoulders work as immediately tells as to a change of narrative identity. Protagonist ‘Mark’ is at the centre of it all, and in the manner of a classical tragedy he is damned from the very start, the journey proving to be the meat of the piece with some dark laughs along the way.
England & Son is a contemporary parable, one working class boy-to-man’s story within a system of inherited trauma, colonial fallout, and social services. An at times brutal upbringing (not for the faint-hearted, this) and deeply bonded friendships displayed, in a vernacular that communicates more than words an attitude stone-baked in of frail hope and broken hearts that start their cracks deep in childhood.
England & Son
ROUNDABOUT @ Summerhall – ROUNDABOUT, 13:10, 2-27 August 2023 (except 8th, 15th, 19th & 22nd)
