FringeReview UK 2024

Laughing Boy

Jermyn Street Theatre in Association with Theatre Royal Bath

Genre: Adaptation, Biographical Drama, Contemporary, Drama, Mainstream Theatre, New Writing, Political, Short Plays, Theatre, Tragedy

Venue: Jermyn Street Theatre

Festival: FringeReview UK

Low Down

Review

“Was I born in a bath, Mum?… And did I die in a bath, Mum?” Between such laughter and tears Sara Ryan’s memoir of NHS neglect that led to the death of her son Connor is dramatized and directed by Stephen Unwin as Laughing Boy at Jermyn Street Theatre till May 31^st.

Some of us might remember where we were when the inquiry into the death of 18-year-old Connor Sparrowhawk hit the news. This extraordinarily humane and fearless play dramatizes one family’s fight for justice and to force an investigation of why one young man drowned in a locked bathroom after an epileptic seizure.

He wasn’t alone dying in this institution. But this is the de-funded NHS. An NHS bureaucratized by successive governments so patients become “users” of a consumer-oriented model, doubtless to enhance outcome or shareholders.  And second-class citizens are seen as collateral damage.

Seven actors – four of them multi-roling – play the family, and one might almost put it, other reptiles. But in fact many allies and friends too are invoked by the four actors.

They’re led by Janie Dee’s Dr Sara Ryan, an academic from Oxford, working ironically as she puts it, in disability policy. Dee’s front-and-centre mix of authority and vulnerability, humour and tenderness are a highlight of this production.

The 90 pages of this work power through in 100 minutes straight, the actors present throughout and without costume changes. Narrating from the moment of Connor’s death then rewinding to his life Dee shows just how challenging and joyful their family life was.

Tragically at 18, Connor’s behaviour deteriorated, becoming disturbed, sometimes violent.  Using imaginary conversations Ryan had with her son in the memoir, they function here as a way of keeping him constantly in the room.

Alfie Friedman’s Connor Sparrowhawk is an extraordinary performance: both playful and violent, winning and wistful, joshing and almost dancing through some parts, Friedman conveys both the joy and sometimes wildness of Connor as he swings out of control.

It counterpoints Connor’s infectious love of London buses and desire to work on Oxford transport, very nearly realised, which enjoys a poignant reminder in memorial gifts. Friedman’s phenomenal.

The most magical moments are when Dee enfolds Friedman or they discuss in an imagined limbo just what happened, with Ryan’s signal “matey” a term of endearment in moments of repose as she turns to investigate.

Forbes Masson’s Rich, Ryan’s husband is another narrator, laconic and earthing some of the wild energy in a warm, self-deprecating performance.

Bright elder sister Rosie (Molly Osborne) who often plays doctors or lawyers, relates with articulate fury some of the red tape, but also attests how Connor made Rosie feel “safe”.

Tom (Daniel Rainford) as the younger brother, just 13 at Connor’s death is telling in the moment he gains a first apology after the inquest. Rainford’s is another versatile performance as he takes on prosecution and other roles.

Lee Braithwaite’s Owen is another family member;  Braithwaite’s often given egregious parts: whether medical care worker, student, or defence lawyer.

The final family member Charlie Ives (Will) plays family friends – “these pockets of brilliance” as Ryan herself describes them, with sudden bursts of witness;  or again the inevitable role of more denying staff.

Institutional help was recommended at the now infamous and closed Slade House in Oxford. In seven parts by far the longest is the first, treating Connor’s life; the second the attempt to get justice, then the coroner’s inquest and subsequent shorter sections. The level of incompetence is breathtaking, even given our broken NHS standards.

The lack of training, input, care, derogation of duty and sheer squalor should outrage, but perhaps we’re numbed by it. We should be enraged and this play achieves that agency, by focusing on one life for all. Swiftian in its irony, there’s a bitter sense this really is the tale of a tub: one that itself claimed at least two lives.

Simon Higlett’s simple diorama, a white wrap of a set with a few modern wooden chairs is played over rather beautifully by Ben Ormerod’s lighting, particularly telling in the way it picks out actors and the poignant closing of a door.

Most of all Matt Powell’s video design presents everything from archival footage to court and other documents to montages of events, days out, quilts for the campaign, many buses (a Connor speciality) and illustrations. Holly Khan’s sound uses a naggingly memorable melody and lets in the street on occasion.

Unwin directs his own play as a sweep of storytelling, laughter and devastation. He omits two penultimate “crime and punishment” scenes as introducing malefactors we’ve not dealt with. They can be read as lighting-forks to a campaign in the text which itself telegraphs the original memoir. Ryan herself was involved.

As Unwin too has a son a year younger than Connor with difficulties-  and has written All Our Children (JST, 2017) about the Nazis’ treatment of such children – this work, “a dreadful but logical sequel”, is in the best sense a labour of love and rage. A perennial gem and living memorial.

Published May 1, 2024May 1, 2024 by Simon Jenner