Written by Ed Edwards

Directed by Cressida Brown

Tickets: £15.00 (Con. available)

If it wasn’t for their admission, and the playwright’s presence this evening at the Traverse, the idea that this is the first play Mark Thomas has performed that he has not written may have never occurred to audiences. They’d be proven right, in that England & Son was crafted with the comedian and performer Thomas at the forefront of creation, given the intricacy and connection they forge with Ed Edwards’ play weaving the impact and penetrating rot of colonialism through the experiences of a juvenile offender with such directness and unrelenting truth.

Structurally, the evening is lopsided in its presentation and running time. For many, it’s additional time in the company of a charismatic and earnestly engaging performer – though it begins to push the evening into an extended affair. England & Son is a one-act solo production, one which is deserving of the highest praise for its harrowing rawness, stellar performance, and darkly bleak command of humour – but it comes with a preceding question & answers sequence in which Thomas introduces audiences to both his and Edwards’ work with storytelling and narrative structures and the relationship it has with lives, specifically with addicts.

It’s a humorous and interesting insight into England & Sons’ construction and the broader scale of where concepts and interactions from Thomas and Edwards’ script come from – but even as the themes and experiences are carried through to the main production, it can occasionally come over as a less intensive, even unnecessary inclusion before an interval ahead of the show.

Though on return, Thomas’ emergence from the darkness, cowering and wincing on the floor, England & Son kicks off hard and never relents. A contemporary odyssey where the (literal) bones of capitalism and the British empire lay the foundations of privilege, the audience embarks on a journey of discovery and frank truths on how tipped the table of stolen and pilfered wealth is and how deep the scars of austerity run. Edwards’ script is a masterpiece which presents broken families, communities, and countries with a stroke of violence, with a liberating use of comedy which channels a moral centre to face the fact of our colonialist past and, to an extent, present.  

Simon Jones’ movement direction encompasses the cyclical nature of Edwards’ story, which draws audiences through England & Son with the desire for a young man to see his father smile again, and cope with the loss of his mother, as Thomas’ trajectory invariably returns them to their starting position. It does multiple things, most proficiently demonstrating the exceptional dedication of Thomas to Edwards’ script: the connection and trust the pair exude in one another through the play and the depth of their understanding of the subject matter and ability to communicate this with audiences who may well have zero experience with substance abuse, deprivation, or the criminal justice system.

Strikingly produced well, and timed with precise work from the lighting box, Richard Williamson’s lighting design may inject momentum for these seemingly helpless and traumatic moments, but it never intrudes on the encroaching darkness of what Thomas conveys to the audience, who are enraptured with his presence and control of the space. A space which Cressida Brown’s direction uses to full effect, incorporating the gangways and rises of the Traverse 2, bringing us into the story without physically interacting with us – it becomes a shared experience.

Dynamic, Thomas offers sharp comedic moments which serve as a distinct openness of life – humour ingrained in speech patterns and culture. England & Son, on its own, is a near-perfect representation of the (legal and illegal) rushes and lows of life, a motley theatre of life at its most principally engaging and visceral. As ferocious as it is honest, Edwards’ script was made for Thomas. And Thomas’ magnificently fierce performance was made to tell this story for as many as possible.

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