Death of England - Closing Time

I haven’t seen any of the previous plays in the series so had my fingers crossed that wouldn’t matter.  I don’t think it did as I enjoyed it anyway, although I suspect knowing the backstory might have added an additional layer. 

On a stage which consists of a huge red England cross, Carly (Hayley Squires) and Denise (Sharon Duncan- Brewster) are packing up their shop ready to hand the keys of their failed businesses to the new owners.  Over the next couple of hours we find out that they are mother and daughter ‘in sin’ and that everything has fallen apart because of something Carly did.  The play takes a good hard look at race and identity, racism, English working class culture and colonialism and Black experience today, touching on government failures and mishandling of immigration. Covid and with a background of Windrush.  But at its heart this is  a family drama.  It was both a lot of fun and brought together a lot of different current cultural strands really nicely.  I liked the calling out of the differences between being Black and loving someone who is Black.  The name of Carly and Delroy’s daughter probably got the biggest laughs but the jokes about the coronation got laughter and applause together  so make of that what you will.  The play has a lot of slick comic performances and impressive monologues from both actors that were great fun to watch as they switched characters to tell their stories.  Great performances from both actors but Squires absolutely stood out. And there was a nice bit of banter with the audience, keeping us all on our toes. 

An almost full house, I got a last minute ticket in the front row which was officially restricted view.  I did have to sit up straight to see above the stage which was about level with my nose but actually,  apart from a couple of occasions when one actor’s bum was blocking the view of the others face, it was a great seat.  And I had one of those theatre-goer chats with the person in the next seat, this time a visitor from Singapore.  I had to dash off for my train so I’m sad I didn’t get to hear what she thought of it.  No-one badly behaved this time either.  

A good fun night out but with a fair kick to it too.  Then, just as I start to despair for the future, the two women gave me a tiny bit of hope with the ending. Finally, I did a  bit of star spotting with Chetna Pandya (Coach Singh in Heartstopper) in the audience just across from me.