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Michael and Delroy, the subjects of these two punchy monologues, are best mates from schooldays — even though Michael’s street-trader dad was a white Little Englander known to bellow racist abuse at errant footballers and express himself forcefully on the topic of immigrants, and Delroy is Black.
In Michael, the first part of the Death of England trilogy by playwrights Clint Dyer (who also directs) and Roy Williams, Michael Fletcher (Thomas Coombes) is manning the family flower stall after the sudden death of his father and attempting to come to terms with his memory. Recounting a relationship conducted mostly in boozers and football stands, he sputters rancid racial epithets with the proviso “That’s not me, it’s me dad,” until he’s not sure which is which. If your dad is a dog, will you inevitably catch fleas?
The drawback of the monologue format quickly becomes evident, though: it will never not be awkward to hear a white actor mimic a Caribbean accent (here, Coombes vocalising Delroy’s mum). But uncomfortable moments are fully intended by the playwrights. Black audience members squirm one minute, white ones the next, as we are all invited to dissect Englishness — backward-looking at past glories or open to a diverse future.
The point is not subtly made in the set (Sadeysa Greenaway-Bailey and Ultz) nor in the periodic appearance of a coffin draped in a Union flag. The stage is quartered by a red gangway — the cross of St George — along which Coombes saunters, sprints and rampages.
In Delroy, the second play, the title character is also navigating emotional deep waters, here with a pregnant white girlfriend (Michael’s obstreperous sister, Carly), who his mother disapproves of. Delroy (Paapa Essiedu), sporting an electronic tag, relates his recent rough experience with “Babylon” — the police, he explains, in one of many fourth-wall-breaking quips.
His account of police brutality wins easy sympathy from the audience, but for long stretches, particularly at the start, his speeches seem slangy, improvised, sometimes hard to catch; overall, the piece has much less structure.
Of the two plays, Michael has more visual stimulus in the form of witty props magicked from hidden panels beneath the cross or plucked from ledges on the balconies. A plaque of Medusa stands in for Michael’s mother, amusing but reductive, while a bust of Nefertiti represents Delroy’s disapproving mother and a toy bulldog, Carly. (Both these women will be featured in Closing Time, the final part of the trilogy, from August 22.) You long for these props to become people: a second actor would flesh out Michael’s mother’s bizarre reaction, as he conveys it, on hearing of her husband’s sudden demise.
Delroy depends less on props and vocal impersonation (the brutish coppers in this London manor weirdly have northern accents), more on Essiedu’s lightning speed, darting eyes and comic panache. Michael, with its less sympathetic protagonist, is for that reason the more interesting piece and the tougher task for the actor.
Taken together, it’s striking how little ironic distance there is in the plays, with no sense that ambiguities lurk under the surface of the rapid-fire, manic speeches. That is not to take anything away from the performers’ charisma, stagecraft and mastery of the space.
As for the portentous title, the death here is that of racist ideas of nationality. Delroy and Carly’s child holds the promise of a link between old ways and new thoughts, past and future, Black and white. Even football can forge national unity (provided players don’t miss their penalties). But as Michael’s worries about his “heritage” attest, his father may be history but the values he espoused will not so easily be consigned to the flames.
★★★☆☆
To September 28, sohoplace.org
