In Ed Edwards’ 'England & Son', a work written as a vehicle for stand-up comedian, television activist, anarchist, and investigative journalist Mark Thomas, the personal becomes a metaphor for the political.
Households can be like empires: ruled by iron fists, enabled by those who fear to act, suffered by those who are powerless to escape. The one-man play pulls no punches, as it asks: who or what do you believe in, after you realise that your parents are not saints or idols, and your nation has been built upon the exploitation of others? Can you be raised in a violent household or an oppressive nation, with your formative perceptions of the world shaped by that environment, and yet still grow into something else; something kinder or fairer?
'England & Son' begins with Mark Thomas in the foetal position in a pair of trackies and a polo shirt and he’s screaming: he’s been woken by a trash compactor while sleeping rough inside a garbage bin. His friend Paul is in there too. In 60 white-knuckle minutes, Mark’s character recounts and re-enacts the path that brought him to homelessness: his childhood demolishing buildings with his army-veteran dad, who he reveres and then reviles; foster care and youth detention, then adult incarceration. Pathways to a more prosperous future are offered, but is this seemingly 'better life' all that it appears to be?
Image © Alex Brenner
'England & Son' was inspired, in part, by Mark’s working-class upbringing as the son of a self-employed builder, and a midwife, but is also rich with philosophical and socio-political themes that would appeal to readers of 'The New Statesman', for whom Mark wrote: there’s talk of Thatcher, imperialism, class disparities, imperialist wealth accumulation, war crimes and human rights violations.
Performed in the round, Mark stalks and prowls among the crowd, then charms it; he’s scary, then scared; a frightened child. Drawing on his childhood capacity to recite Bible gospels verbatim, Mark delivers a powerful sermon on Britannia’s sins.
At a time that many facets of our society appear to be collapsing, 'England & Son' proposes a reason for this: maybe it was built on a faulty foundation. This play, though, is constructed on immensely solid ground.
★★★★★
