FringeReview UK 2025
Mr Jones
John Ian Mason and Michael Alexander WilMas Productions and Neil McPherson for the Finborough Theatre
Genre: Drama, Fringe Theatre, Historical, Mainstream Theatre, New Writing, Short Plays, Theatre, Tragedy
Venue: Finborough Theatre
Festival: FringeReview UK
Low Down
Mr Jones: An Aberfan Story, the first play of Liam Holmes – who plays Stephen – arrives at the Finborough, after its Edinburgh Fringe-Award-winning run, Directed by Michael Neri it plays till November 22. A national tour is planned for next year.
Once you’ve seen Mr Jones, it will never leave you. Not just history, but the poignancy that shivers across survivors and leaves them buried, ceaselessly pulling them to the past.
Review
“I’m not trying to be big-headed or anything like that, but I was striking them, wasn’t I?” A boy talks to a father somewhere beyond us. Who never responds because he’s been struck dumb. In a beat self-proclaimed King of the Valley Stephen Jones takes a winning kick. Nurse Angharad Price, coming out of the shadows, is amused. Aberfan, 1966. Mr Jones: An Aberfan Story, the first play of Liam Holmes – who plays Stephen – arrives at the Finborough, after its Edinburgh Fringe-Award-winning run, Directed by Michael Neri it plays till November 22. A national tour is planned for next year.
We’re immediately shuffled between after and before, and over 80 minutes Mr Jones sashays seamlessly through the most traumatic event of modern Welsh history. On October 21 1966, coal tip slurry engulfed a school – about to break up for holidays – and houses in Aberfan. 144 died including 116 children: a generation was wiped out. Holmes himself grew up nearby.
When we first see Stephen (Liam Holmes), he’s just short of 20, trying to communicate with his father, who says nothing. Yet we find that someone else has already told Stephen that if he ever needs to talk, to talk to her. Something’s already being handed on.
A moment later we’re back on October 21, on a mountain in early morning. The young woman Stephen admires so much, 24-year-old nurse Angharad (Mabli Gwynne), mocks him lightly. But it’s a loving banter. Despite their age-difference, they’re deeply attracted. Though Angharad finds Stephen a bit young, will playfully wait till “there’s more meat on the bone.” They have a singular history. Angharad only has a nan near Cardiff. Stephen lost his mother; he, his younger maths-wizard brother Dafydd and father rely on Angharad to look after them. She’s family, but she and Stephen are more than that.
Though Stephens’ mother got Angharad into nursing, she only half-jokes she’d love to be a family lawyer, perhaps in Australia. One of the script’s delights is the way language is sued beyond its brilliant dialogue, but as symbols of how language determines your life. There’s smart Stephen picking up vocabulary from Angharad, who mocks and teaches him works like “incentive” or “aggravation”. Education is the great Welsh class buster. There’s talk too of Dafydd’s going to London: his maths will free him. Getting out of the valleys is a continual trope; remaining, like giving up. Yet paradoxically another delight is the Valley’s own tongue. This play is striped through with Welsh phrases the two actors dip in and out with. Indeed Angharad sings a song in Welsh and English, which wryly acknowledges only English can be universally understood. When Stephen encounters her singing it, he thinks she’s already leaving.
It could all have gone embarrassingly wrong for Stephen when he recalls a moment years ago. He’s whispered to his mates that he and the just-passing Angharad are going out. When one boy calls her out on this she backs Stephen up; then privately hisses savageries to him. The agonisingly slow circling around each other as they acknowledge their feelings yet seem shy of acting on them, is at first funny, then aching.
Juliette Demoulin’s striking set is a curve lit by Alistair Tombs from behind its simple lattice of wood strips: that look sometimes like a library of historical records, then a threatening slurry heap, sometimes a mountainside. That’s down to Tombs’ back lighting (blue, green, and dark) and haunting effects. There’s a more solid lower section where the two across jump up, down and stare across at each other. Occasionally mist rises from behind, seen through the lattice.
In a script of exceptional swerve, compression and velocity, time is shuttlecocked across the terrible black border of the disaster till it looms in James ‘Bucky’ Barnes’ and Zach North’s sound. This has been sparing. A football chant, Welsh children singing, occasional voices of witness. The palate quietly darkens; the thunderous roar the alert Angharad picks out first is flicked away and we’re back before.
The zig-zag narrative builds life-changing moments through aftershocks, with Stephen twitching and withdrawn. By now Angharad is dealing with a crisis in the hospital. Still later she’s in a different space with Stephen. All through, Angharad litanises: “I love you. I love you to bits” the last words protecting the stark first three from saying too much. Stephen chimes like an echo. It begins to hurt by now. Can Angharad bring him back and take him away from all this?
Holmes from larky to lost shudders his own words, glowing with the silences between. His flinch-away from even looking at Gwynne is more than traumatised. Holmes’ Stephen looks near to breakdown, someone on a ward that Angharad would be tending. It’s a masterclass in acting.
Gwynne herself from gleaming face full of shy mischief and delicate moves towards Holmes, can melt to tenderness or – frequently – flare up in fury at Stephen’s cack-handed banter. Even more a refusal to face what’s happening to him. That’s before and after. Gwynne’s face radiates or clouds. Anger or warmth scuds mercurially across it. She’s equally outstanding.
Yet ultimately it’s Stephen’s decision. Angharad’s offer aches between and Stephen starts with noticing her new green coat. An exquisite debut play, it’s staged with a bold economy brushed with brilliance; and outstandingly acted. Holmes and Gwynne too deserve awards. If Holmes is one future of Welsh drama, we should be seeing a lot more of him and it. And once you’ve seen Mr Jones, it will never leave you. Not just history, but the poignancy that shivers across survivors and leaves them buried, ceaselessly pulling them to the past.
Stage Manager Bronwen Williams, Production Manager Liza Cheal, Production Photography Helios Media PR.
General Manager Tara Marricdale, Assistant General Managers Sophie Gill and Silvia Verzaro, Assistant Resident Director Jillian Feuerstein, Cover Art Designer, Jillian Feuerstein.
John Ian Mason and Michael Alexander WilMas Productions and Neil McPherson for the Finborough Theatre. PR Kevin Wilson PR.
Thanks to Tanwen Stokes, Rhiannydd Andrews.
