★★★★ Death of England
Rafe Spall charges out in tour-de-force fury when Death of England, a monolog by Clint Dyer and Roy Williams, explodes into savage life. Spall realizes the potential fully and beyond. Usually actors avoid coming on too strong for the reason that they will have “have nowhere to go.”
This doesn’t bother Spall or director Dyer, who has Spall put the metal to the pedal when the character Michael Fletcher first hurries along the cross-shaped runway designed by Sadeysa Greenaway-Bailey and ULTZ. The two contrive to keep that metal attached to the pedal, with Spall finding innumerable ways to bring variety to Michael’s emotions.
Above the set hangs a wreath composed of white flowers spelling “Dad.” The prominent ornament establishes the thrust of Michael’s complaints. No, not complaints, rants—in a work that began as Williams’ micro-play commissioned by the Royal Court.
What William had in mind and evidently Dyer helped expand into its current insistent form is a son confronting his recently deceased father. This is a son who’s gone off the tracks and, drink often in hand, wants to set all his failures at his father’s now inanimate feet.
All the while, there’s the sense that Michael knows Dad isn’t the entire cause of the downfall, and that’s really behind the intensity of his anger.
The Death of England title reflects Michael’s 100-minute outcry about the Brexit-drenched nation through his relationships with his mum, sister Carly, friend Delroy, a man called Riz who knows a secret about Michael’s dad Alan, and Alan himself, a man of many ostensibly hidden prejudices. It’s a look at a moribund country through the narrow, very combustible focus of father-son combat.
Another way to take Death of England in is to consider it as a depiction of how Hamlet might have behaved had he been able to unleash his anger the minute he returned to Denmark for his father’s funeral and the precipitate wedding of his mother to his murdering uncle. Spall certainly plays this one with that kind of bravura.
★★★★ A Number
Fathers and sons are also having their day in the revival of Caryl Churchill’s A Number. In contrast to the Clint Dyer-Roy Williams Death of England, it’s the father who’s having the more difficult struggle here.
For the 60-minute or so 2002 piece, Churchill spins an inspired metaphor. She imagines Salter (Roger Allam) who learns his son, also called Michael (see above), has been cloned, a son now also showing up as B1 and B2 (Colin Morgan in all three roles).
He’s outraged, as is Michael. In the first of the many brief scenes, Salter grills his biological son so that their complicated feelings are aired. But he’s intent on questioning the two clones about their attitudes towards an unusual status—these two men being the only two he appears to reach. (They all usually meet in a set meant, it seems, to be Salter’s home. During blackouts, designer Lizzie Clachan’s sets often change, however.)
Churchill’s keen metaphor stands for fathers habitually trying to get a handle on their sons. There’s no news in saying parents perhaps more often than not want their offspring to choose specific lives, whereas maturing offspring more often than not have different ideas. The two clones definitely do.
As Salter, who loves his son, converses with the three figures, he becomes increasingly flummoxed. Allam, an actor whose intelligence is always on display, is excellent at portraying Salter’s growing anxiety. It even seems as if his clothes (Clachan is also the costumer) grow dumpier. Morgan, faced with alternating characters while remaining somehow the same character, is deft at the required on-a-dime shape-shifting. Polly Findlay is the director and looks to understand father-son relationships rather well.
Because Churchill is regularly cagey, different takes have been put on A Number—e.g., it’s a sci-fi jaunt—but the father-son thrust is hard to miss.
★★★★ Endgame/Rough for Theater II
Is it excessive to claim that Samuel Beckett’s Endgame is yet another father-son farrago? There is an outright father-son pairing here. They’re slowly disintegrating monarch Hamm (Alan Cumming) and his father Nagg (Karl Johnson), who resides in a metal container from which he occasionally pops his grizzled head for ignominious encounters with Hamm. In an adjacent matching container is Nagg’s wife Nell (Jane Horrocks).
Hamm’s primary relationship is with retainer Clov (Daniel Radcliffe), who, whenever he’s whistled for, arrives to stand at attention next to Hamm’s throne and wait for instruction. During these moments Hamm and Clov habitually engage in abusive exchanges. And their contentiousness can be taken to represent another father-son union.
Did Beckett intend Endgame to be as hilarious as it is in Richard Jones’ revival? His stage directions, which were always sacrosanct to him, may not indicate as much. Nevertheless, patrons this outing are kept laughing as they watch four nerve-wracked characters condemned to engage endlessly with each other. Hamm is unable to rise from his throne. Clov is indentured to Hamm. Nagg and Nell are stuck in their bins. (Stewart Laing designed the claustrophobic set,)
Jones has to be getting the performances he wants from Cumming, Radcliffe, Johnson, and Horrocks. In a shabby robe and soiled undershirt with his thin legs showing, Cumming looks to be about to pass out or pass on, except when he regains full strength to dispatch and chastise Clov. Radcliffe, adopting a shlumpy walk, does everything absolutely right, not least of which are the different ways he’s found to climb and descend the ladder he often carts about at Hamm’s instructions. In their brief appearances, Johnson and Horrocks are the able stage vets they always are.
At various times, Hamm decides he’s had it with his restricted life and says things like, “This has gone on long enough.” He’s right. Beckett himself has extended his sketch too far. Hamm’s utterances may be Beckett’s way of preempting criticism. It’s no big worry, though. This Endgame still has the goods.
The evening has a curtain-raiser, Rough for Theater II, in which two martinet-ish men, A (Radcliffe) and B (Cumming) sit a desks to discuss the fate of C (Jackson Milner), who stands silently silhouetted in a raised doorway. The short piece is rarely performed. There seems to be good reason for that.
