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Edinburgh Reporter
28-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Edinburgh Reporter
Liam Rudden's Must See Theatre this month
The calm before the storm that is the Edinburgh Festivals may leave Edinburgh stages bare but a London theatre break promises something special this month. As Edinburgh theatres fall into their usual pre-Fringe slumber this month, there's only one big touring production heading to town in July and that is Dear Evan Hansen at The Playhouse (1-5 July). The Olivier, Tony and Grammy Award-winning musical is packed with some of the biggest musical theatre songs of the last decade. All his life, Evan Hansen has felt invisible. But when a tragic event shocks the community and thrusts him into the centre of a rapidly evolving controversy, he is given the opportunity of a lifetime – the chance to be somebody else. With a score by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, the Oscar-winning composers for The Greatest Showman, book by Steven Levenson and direction by Adam Penford, the Artistic Director at Nottingham Playhouse, this brand-new production marks the first time the Broadway and West End phenomenon has toured the UK. It stars Scottish musical theatre star Ryan Kopel in the title role, with Sonny Monaghan appearing as Alternative Evan at matinee performances. I caught up with both Ryan and Sonny as they prepared to take Dear Evan Hansen on the road, you can meet them here. Running time 2 hours 40 minutes including interval, tickets here. With a dearth of shows in the Capital, you could do worse than planning a theatre break this month, and if that means a trip to London, get in early as there's still time to catch the final week of London Theatre Direct's Big Summer Theatre. Now in its second year, the event, which runs until Monday 7 July (keep your eyes peeled though as it was extended by a further week last year), allows you to choose from more than 40 musicals and plays, including The Devil Wears Prada, Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, Back to the Future the Musical, Clueless the Musical, Matilda the Musical, and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, and save up to 50% off, with tickets from just £15. This year, however, don't just see the on stage magic, experience it with a series of exclusive photo experiences. Now you can step onto the stage after seeing Hadestown, Titanique, Starlight Express, Fiddler on the Roof and The Great Gatsby, to pose for a professional photo moment – have your photo taken on stage after seeing Hadestown at the Lyric Theatre, snap a pic with a Titanique cast member on the Criterion Theatre stage, toast your West End debut with a complimentary drink and photo op at Fiddler on the Roof, feel like a winner when you race onto the Troubadour Wembley Park Theatre stage for a Starlight Express photo op – no skates required, but a complimentary drink is a must – or join the roaring 20's party with an old sport from the The Great Gatsby cast, as you pose on stage with them at the London Coliseum. Ready to make your summer unforgettable? Explore all participating shows and secure your seat at the hottest event of the season here. Back in Edinburgh, there's a chance for little ones to get their introduction to theatre at The Playhouse when, for one day only, The Dinosaur That Pooped – A Rock Show (24 July) comes to the Greenside Place venue for two performances at 1.30pm and 4.30pm. When Danny and Dino's favourite rock band are playing their last ever concert, they go on a quest to get the last two tickets. But with a villainous band manager lurking, nothing goes to plan. Will the band perform? Will Danny rock out? Or will Dino's rumbling tummy save the day? Adapted from the No1 best-selling books by Tom Fletcher and Dougie Poynter, the whole family will have a poopy good time enjoying a brand, new story for the stage. Featuring new songs by the McFly favourites Fletcher and Pointer, a lot of laughs and a whole lot of poo. Running time 1 hour with no interval. Tickets here. Now if ever a venue was made to host a production of the work of Transporting author Irvine Welsh, it surely has to be the old Leith Town Hall Theatre, now better known as Leith Theatre, and that's exactly what the venue is set to do when it brings Porno (18 & 19 July), to 28 Ferry Road. Adapted by Davie Carswell from Welsh's novel of the same name, the stage production of Porno started life as 50 minute one-act play at The Pleasance as part of the 2022 Fringe, however, it's the full-length version that comes to Leith Theatre, one that has already sold out runs at the Liverpool Olympia, Crewe Lyceum, Manchester Waterside as well as a seven week season at the Art's Theatre in London's West End. Porno, the follow up novel to Trainspotting, reveals what has become of Renton, Sickboy, Spud and Begbie some 15 years on from their original exploits. It goes without saying, sure that swearing, drug use and language of a sexual nature are the order of the day, which makes the 13+ advisory seem quite liberal. Running time 2 Hours including interval. Tickets here Next month, of course, we'll be spoiled for choice as the Festival and Fringe comes around once again. The Edinburgh Reporter will once again exclusive carry my Fringe Hot Ticket hit lists, in the meantime you can keep up to date with the shows coming to Edinburgh in August that are catching my eye by visiting And please do keep an eye out for the three shows I'm directing. If you like a supernatural tale or two, Fallen Angel, my new one-man play, and The Omega Factor: By The Pricking Of My Thumbs, by Natasha Gerson and myself, might be right up your street. If it's comedy you're looking for, check out Hingin' Oan Fir Googsie, by John McColl, starring River City's Jimmy Chisholm, will definitely be worth a look. Tickets here. Until August, happy theatre going, Liam Like this: Like Related
Edinburgh Reporter
26-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Edinburgh Reporter
Dear Evan Hansen – speaking to Ryan Kopel and Sonny Monaghan ahead of Edinburgh run
'Today is going to be a good day…' With not one, but two Evan Hansens in the room, that would appear to be a given. Ryan Kopel and Sonny Monaghan may sport very different looks and have an age gap of six years but they have one important thing in common, both are preparing to play the iconic title role in the new Nottingham Playhouse production of the Olivier, Tony and Grammy award-winning Best Musical, Dear Evan Hansen. Kopel stars in the fresh new take on the musical, which will embark on its first UK Tour after opening in Nottingham, while Monaghan is the alternate Evan. Both are excited at the prospect and it's clear they can't wait to have an audience. With musical theatre credits that include Newsies and The Book of Mormon, Kopel landed the coveted role after a three month audition process. He recalls, 'My agent asked me if I'd be interested in Dear Evan Hansen at the start of the year. I said, 'Yes', and then did five auditions, the last one being in March. A couple of days later, while on the Underground going home, my agent called to say I'd got the part. I was so excited I had to get off the Tube to scream a little bit. Then I realised I was miles away from my stop and would have to walk the rest of the way. That was even more tortuous as I couldn't wait to see my family and partner's faces when I told them.' If Kopel's casting followed a fairly traditional route, for Monaghan, from Eastbourne, the audition process proved very 'now', he landed the part after submitting a video on TikTok, as part of the casting team's collaboration with the social media platform, which invited users who were interested in being cast in the production to upload a video of themselves singing any number from the show. From more than 2,000 submissions, the 21-year-old was one of 36 TikTok users invited to in- person auditions, eventually being cast as a member of the show's ensemble and as alternate Evan, a role he will perform twice a week, at every matinee. The 21-year-old explains, 'I saw a post asking people to submit a video of themselves singing a number from Dear Evan Hansen through TikTok. I sang Words Fail. Maybe three weeks later I got an email inviting me to an in person audition.' Three rounds of auditions later, Monaghan was recording a song for his friend's new musical when he got his good news and, as it was Dear Evan Hansen that first got him into musical theatre while at secondary school, he says receiving the news was 'a dream come true.' 'When my agent called and said I'd been offered the alternate Evan, my friend and I had a bit of a celebration,' he admits. Dear Evan Hansen is the story of an anxious high school kid who wants nothing more than to fit in. The thing is, on his way to fitting in, he didn't tell the whole truth. And now must give up on a life he never dreamt he'd have. As events spiral and the truth comes out, Evan faces a reckoning with himself and everyone around him. Washington premiere The musical premiered in Washington, DC, in 2015 before transferring to Off-Broadway and then Broadway a year later. The London West End production followed in 2019 but it was on Broadway that Monaghan, a self confessed fan of the show, first saw the musical during a family holiday to New York. He loved it so much he then went to see the original West End production when it opened. For 27-year-old Kopel, it was a very different story. The actor from Kirriemuir, in Scotland, reveals, 'I never saw the original production, but Dear Evan Hansen was such a huge cultural phenomenon when it first came out that I knew all about it without ever really knowing the story.' His introduction to that came during the audition process and with themes including bullying and mental health, he quickly discovered that Dear Evan Hansen deals with some important issues. He recalls, 'Reading the script during the audition process was very helpful because as much as Ben Platt, the original Evan, was iconic in the role, it was nice to be able to form my own take on Evan. The writing is so good that I really can just trust my instinct to bring what I feel to the character. Usually when you do a musical that has been done before, there's a set way of doing everything; 'This is how you say this line,' and, 'This is where you stand on the stage for this moment'. We've had none of that. We have complete freedom to take the script and create something new.' 'Staging-wise, everything is different…' chips in Monaghan, before Kopel continues, 'It's eight years since the Broadway production debuted, which doesn't sound that long but when you think about it, a lot has changed in that time. The technology we use everyday is so different that much of the script has taken on a whole new meaning. Just looking at the piece from the lens of 2024 has been an interesting experience.' If the rehearsal period has been invigorating for Kopel, for Monaghan it has been nothing less than hectic. Explaining how having two Evans 'in the room' works, he reveals, 'Mainly, it's Ryan and the principal cast who are in the rehearsal room with director Adam Penford. They create the show. As the alternate Evan, I get brought in once it looks the way they want it to look. Then I work with our associate director to replicate that.' Kopel elaborates, 'To be fair, that is the case, but it's also done that way because Sonny has about '90 million' different things to learn. While I'm lucky to be focussing on one character, he has to be in a different room learning the parts of Evan, Connor, Jared and all the ensemble's moves too. 100 per cent do I have the easy shift… apart from having to do it every night,' he grins. The Mix And it's not just lines, songs and moves the pair have to familiarise themselves with, due to the sensitive themes of the piece, producers have partnered with The Mix, the UK's leading digital charity for under 25-year-olds, to ensure anyone affected by the issues explored in the show knows where to find support. The Mix has provided training to the cast and creative team on how to appropriately respond to queries from the public, both online and offline, and equip them with the knowledge to direct individuals to the right support channels. 'The Mix is there for anyone who needs to reach out for support,' explains Kopel. 'We had a long Zoom with them the very first week of rehearsals where they explained what they did and the way they work. It was an incredible insight into a world I had no idea about.' 'Given the nature of the show, if people struggling with these issues come to see the show, The Mix has given us the information we need to point them in the right direction if they come to the stage door,' adds Monaghan, before Kopel continues, 'There's just something about this show that allows people to connect deeply with the characters. Often, they then associate characters with the actor playing them and open up, sharing what they are going through. We take that responsibility incredibly seriously and having that guidance from The Mix is vitally important.' Despite its themes, Dear Evan Hansen is a beautifully crafted and uplifting piece of musical theatre, one that Monaghan believes will 'be a blessing for many, by helping them realise they need to talk to someone.' Kopel agrees, 'Ultimately, Dear Evan Hansen is about hope. No matter what happens, what you are going through, its message is that there is always someone to talk to and reasons why you should go on. That's what I'd like people to take away from the show.' Biggest songs Packed with some of the biggest musical theatre songs of the last decade, Dear Evan Hansen has Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, the Oscar-winning composers for The Greatest Showman, to thank for its haunting score and both Evans have a favourite song when asked which they enjoy singing most. The anthemic For Forever is Monaghan's while for Kopel it is Words Fail, he adds with a cheeky smile, 'I like it because it's a bit of an emotional catharsis, it doesn't matter if your voice cracks because you are crying and already an emotional mess.' Before they head back to rehearsal, there's one last question: Dear Evan Hansen starts with Evan writing a letter to himself. It begins, naturally enough, with the title of the show followed by 'Today is going to be a good day because…' So, what would they write in such a letter to themselves? 'Keeping in line with the show, My letter would say, 'Dear Ryan Kopel, today is going to be a good day because you can take each day at a time, every hour as it comes',' says the Scot. 'Mine would read, 'Dear Sonny Monaghan, today is going to be a good day because this is what and where you want to be and you should know that you have worked hard and deserve to be here'.' With opening night fast approaching, both admit that despite their reassuring words to themselves, the nerves are sure to kick in on the big night, but even that is a good thing. 'I kind of live in a state of constant nerves anyway,' laughs Kopel, 'but nerves before a performance are definitely a good thing. It means you care, so I'll harness them and let them kick me up a gear…' 'It's like athletes,' nods Monaghan, 'You have to use your nerves and adrenaline to reach your peak performance…' Kopel laughs, 'Yes, and then keep it there for another two and half hours.' Dear Evan Hansen Edinburgh Playhouse 1-5 July 2025 Tickets here Like this: Like Related
BBC News
15-04-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
25 of the best theatre shows to see in spring and summer 2025
Many theatres around the UK are staging fewer original productions than a decade ago, BBC research has revealed. But there are still plenty of plays and musicals on offer. Here are highlights from some of the theatres covered by the research. Playwright James Graham's latest powerful drama Punch, about the fallout from one fatal moment on a Saturday night out, is based on a true story. It has had rave reviews at Nottingham Playhouse and now at the Young Vic in London, where it runs until 26 April. It will transfer to the West End's Apollo Theatre in September. Raoul Moat, who went on a murderous rampage and spent a week on the run in 2010 is examined by award-winning playwright Robert Icke in Manhunt, which attempts to imagine what was going through Moat's mind. Royal Court, London, until 3 May. Psychological thriller Our New Girl by Nancy Harris, who wrote acclaimed TV comedy-drama The Dry, follows a woman struggling to deal with work and a troubled son when the arrival of an au pair does anything but help. Belfast Lyric, until 4 May. Alexis Deacon's children's book Beegu, about a lonely yellow alien who finds herself lost on Earth, is adapted for ages three to seven and is at the Unicorn Theatre, London, until 4 May. The UK stage premiere of a stage show based on feelgood 1994 Australian film Muriel's Wedding turns the story of the woman who longs to have the wedding of her dreams into a musical. Original songs are mixed with tunes by Muriel's beloved Abba. Leicester Curve, until 10 romantic comedy Much Ado About Nothing takes place in the world of footballers, wags and the celebrity high life, led by Freema Agyeman (Doctor Who) and Nick Blood (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.). Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-upon-Avon, until 24 Man, Two Guvnors playwright Richard Bean's touching and comedic portrait of a Humberside family dealing with ageing and generational frissons, To Have and To Hold, stars Paula Wilcox, Ian Bartholomew and Stephen Tompkinson when it comes home to Hull Truck, 1-24 left an image of a girl standing in falling snow – which is actually ash from a fire – on the corner of a garage near the steelworks in Port Talbot, south Wales, in 2018. Now, Port Talbot Gotta Banksy uses the real words of local people to examine how the community reacted. Sherman Theatre, Cardiff, 2-10 May, then New Plaza, Port Talbot, 15-17 May, and author Roddy Doyle's book Two Pints, about two middle-aged men reflecting on life over a drink in a Dublin pub, gets its UK stage premiere at Coventry's Belgrade Theatre, 2-24 Addy plays a man who decides to walk the length of England to visit a former colleague who has cancer, in the world premiere of a stage adaptation of 2012 best-selling book The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. Rachel Joyce has adapted her own novel, with songs by chart-topping singer-songwriter Passenger. Chichester Festival Theatre, 5 May-4 Luther King meets his match in the form of a Memphis hotel maid in an imagined meeting on the eve of his assassination in Katori Hall's The Mountaintop, in a new production by Edinburgh Lyceum, 31 May-21 final play by unsung Stoke-on-Trent writer Arthur Berry finally gets its world premiere to mark the 100th anniversary of his birth. The title character in Whatever Happened to Phoebe Salt? dreams of swapping the grind of her butcher's job for a life in showbusiness. New Vic, Newcastle-under-Lyme, 31 May-21 Tick, Tick… Boom!, about an aspiring composer confronted by his 30th birthday, became an Oscar-nominated film in 2021. It now reopens Theatr Clwyd in Mold, north Wales, after a three-year, £49m refurbishment. 2-28 June. James Cooper and Jamie Morton - two-thirds of the team behind hit podcast My Dad Wrote A Porno - have made Lovestuck: A New Comedy Musical, which is billed as a "riotous romantic comedy" about dating and the quest to find love. Theatre Royal Stratford East, London, 6 June-12 children must fend for themselves after their addict mother abandons them in their caravan for the summer holidays in "dark comedy" Flumps (not to be confused with the 1970s children's TV show!). Colchester Mercury, 6-14 pairs of dancers have made it to Blackpool's National Amateur Championships, but rivalries and mis-steps threaten the fixed smiles and fake tans in Amanda Whittington's Kiss Me Quickstep, Derby Theatre, 6-21 people in different corners of the world – the fjords of Norway, the mountains of Colorado and the Tesco in Halewood, Merseyside – have encounters with wild animals in The Walrus has a Right to Adventure, inspired by real events. Liverpool Everyman, 12-21 June.A fictional lesbian choir – said to be the only one in the country – face tensions from inside and out as they try to win a place on the Pride main stage in The Ministry of Lesbian Affairs, a musical comedy at the Kiln, London, 13 June-12 July. Welsh 19th Century aristocrat Henry Cyril Paget, the fifth Marquess of Anglesey, scandalised high society with eccentricities that included using a car that converted exhaust fumes into perfume, and blowing his family's fortune on diamond frocks. His story is told in How To Win Against History, Bristol Old Vic, 19 June-21 July.A man who lost his wife to Covid occupies himself by walking his neighbour's dogs. When they escape one day, he takes chase and finds a dead body, forcing him to confront his own grief, in Man's Best Friend at Tron, Glasgow, 19 June-12 Lenny Henry's children's book The Boy With Wings, about a boy who discovers he has inherited superpowers and is tasked with saving the world, gets its stage premiere at Polka Theatre, London, 21 June-16 August, then Birmingham Rep, 21-30 August. A couple dealing with the everyday challenges of dementia take inspiration from Leeds United's 2020 promotion-chasing team and their manager Marcelo Bielsa in Through It All Together, which looks set to be perfectly timed to coincide with the team's latest return to the Premier League. Leeds Playhouse, 23 June-19 July. Liberation will mark the 80th anniversary of the Fifth Pan African Congress, which was held in Manchester in 1945 and was a key moment for independence movements. Royal Exchange, Manchester, 27 June-26 July. The writer and director of smash hit Prima Facie, starring Jodie Comer, reunite for a new legal drama. Saltburn's Rosamund Pike plays a judge in Inter Alia, billed as a "searing examination of modern masculinity and motherhood". National Theatre, London, 10 July-13 Brian Cox returns to the Scottish stage for the first time in a decade, playing pioneering 18th Century economist Adam Smith in Make It Happen, James Graham's new satire about the history of the Royal Bank of Scotland and its role in the 2008 financial crash. Dundee Rep, 18-26 July, then Edinburgh Festival Theatre 30 July-9 August.
The Guardian
16-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The week in theatre: The Seagull; Punch
Fresh from the seaside, I went in warily to Thomas Ostermeier's production of The Seagull. How could that bird be an image of vulnerability, when on today's beaches gulls are predators, strutting like bankers, swooping on passersby? What's more, it is so hard to pull off the crucial scene in which Nina – betrayed by her lover, her ambitions in ruins – flaps desolately around calling herself a seagull. Tragedy often looks like histrionics. Which raises the question of why critics suspect the celebrated actor Arkadina of inauthenticity because of her profession, while Nina, the failed actor, is considered to be simply sincere. And yet in this new adaptation by Ostermeier and Duncan Macmillan, Chekhov's 1896 drama brims with interest, even when snatched brutally into the present: sun loungers! Quad bikes! This is the best ever play about writers, and a real quizzing of drama. Even better, as David Hare, the author of a very good version, has argued, it's a play about change and struggle, in which theatre is 'only the metaphor'. Time and again, The Seagull is an engine for extraordinary performances. Cate Blanchett is a magnetic and maddening Arkadina. Full of allure and affectation, she gives not so much a portrait of a bad actor as of bad actoriness: leaping in a purple boiler suit; doing the splits (applause from the audience) in glitter trousers; tap dancing, flinging herself to the ground, fidgeting and rustling papers when the spotlight is on someone else. Yet, in the best Chekhov tradition, there is no single spotlight. Almost every character has a moment when the stage takes on the colour of their personality, though I wish they did so without seizing one of the too-ubiquitous mics: the text is diminished by amplification. Emma Corrin, with Peter Pan candour, makes Nina unusually dangerous as well as artless. At the moment when most under the spell of the dramatist Trigorin (a stiff-with-self-regard Tom Burke), Nina slaps him: exactly how an uncertain young girl might overreact. As Masha, Tanya Reynolds has no trace of ornamental melancholy: she is truly depressed, sunk-shouldered in a droopy long skirt, vaping. And Jason Watkins – with bad shorts and a blue supermarket plastic bag – is a wily, funny, heart-wrenching Sorin. I saw a transcendent production in 2007, directed by Ian Rickson, with Kristin Scott Thomas as Arkadina (both were there on this press night). On Hildegard Bechtler's Royal Court set – dark wood and gull colours – Carey Mulligan flew high as Nina, alongside Mackenzie Crook and Chiwetel Ejiofor. No production has surpassed that for me, but this utterly different vivacity at the Barbican is proof of the morphing, soaring power of The Seagull. It is extraordinary, the gathering force of Punch. How it begins as a singular history and ends as a universal statement. How – as the theatre is uniquely equipped to do – it actually incarnates change. This is a 2024 Nottingham Playhouse production of a real-life Nottingham story. Who better to write it than James Sherwood Graham, who grew up in Nottinghamshire. And who better to spell out the nationwide implications than Graham, whose football-as-portrait-of-a-country play Dear England has just arrived in an updated version at the National. Actually, more than nationwide: Adam Penford's production of Punch goes to Broadway this autumn. Based on Jacob Dunne's autobiographical memoir Right from Wrong (2022), Punch is a history of casual violence and catastrophic consequence. As a teenager high on drugs and gang pressure, Dunne lands an unmotivated punch on a stranger and ends up imprisoned for manslaughter. Yet it is also a story of repair. A few years after his incarceration, Dunne has a degree, a family and a sense of purpose. Under the auspices of the restorative justice process, he has been brought together with the dead man's devastated parents. Together, though always shadowed, they have begun to understand each another. To convince, the history needs gradual, delicate unfolding. Penford gives it the right pace: as if we were watching in real time. Though the evening begins with some over-jittery choreography, and though the social message is heavily underlined, tremendous acting provides a sense of things being held always in a tremulous balance. The puncher says: 'I didn't mean it.' His victim's father observes that a punch is not an accident. David Shields puts in a career-making performance as the young man. He is at first beside himself: fidgety-limbed, his speech a string of blurred sounds that don't always coalesce into words, his words only sometimes reaching towards sense. Slowly he comes into focus: tighter mentally, physically, emotionally. As the victim's mother, Julie Hesmondhalgh is remarkable. Though utterly forthright, her performance is full of small, self-deprecating, what-am-I-like gestures that you might think would register only in closeup. She makes comedy and hesitation betray the tangle of her feelings. Looking for the word 'punitive' she comes up with 'Pontefract'; she stumbles over the word 'restorative'. Tony Hirst is impressive as her husband: steadily sorrowful, kind, unforgiving. She is in a furry dressing gown, he in chunky cable knit. Alec Boaden makes a memorable stage debut. There is a strong, overtly stated social message about the waste of life here: why, one character asks, do people understand that, left to themselves, potholes will turn into gaping holes, but fail to recognise that cracks in humans and their circumstances will turn into abysms. Punch persuades us that this need not be so. Star ratings (out of five) The Seagull ★★★★Punch ★★★★ The Seagull is at the Barbican theatre, London, until 5 April Punch is at the Young Vic, London, until 26 April
Telegraph
07-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Punch: another state-of-the-nation masterpiece from James Graham
is the most celebrated British playwright of the past decade. Crucial to his success is an exploration of Britishness which manages to combine the personal and the political, often using big institutions to explore our obsessions and peculiarities. In Dear England (2023) we had the England football team representing our anxieties as a society; in Ink (2017), Murdoch's tabloid endeavours became a magnet for our own tawdry desires. Punch, a richly deserved transfer from Nottingham Playhouse, is resolutely personal and political, too: a state-of-the-nation play which never hectors its audience. The result is a compelling examination of the human cost and consequences of violence. It is based on the memoir of Jacob Dunne, Right From Wrong, and takes us back to a fateful summer night in 2011 when Dunne, then a feckless 19-year-old from Nottingham (and the product of a tough council estate upbringing) killed James Hodgkinson, with a single, impulsive punch. After serving 14 months in prison for manslaughter, Jacob finds himself homeless and lacking purpose. Through a mediator from Remedi, a charity for restorative justice, he meets James's parents who are themselves searching for answers, which duly effects a profound transformation. We witness the events which lead up to the catastrophic blow, as well as his subsequent incarceration and rehabilitation. Flashbacks to Jacob's childhood and schooling suggest that the chance of him leading a good life were slim from the start. Indeed, this is a play which has much to say about the lack of opportunity (and the increasing demonisation) of the white working-class male. Graham is not exonerating Dunn, though, and part of his skill as a playwright comes from the way in which he stresses the importance of personal responsibility. Dunn is certainly humanised, but it is never at the expense of his victim. There is also a vein of humour which is disconcerting, but brings an added depth to the overall structure of the play. The strength of Graham's writing is complemented by Adam Penford's direction which is always sensitive, and is marked by an almost balletic grace. Anna Fleischle's set design, a two-tier concrete underpass, suggests a nihilism that's reminiscent of the 2009 film Harry Brown, starring Michael Caine as a vigilante pensioner. As for the cast, David Shields is exceptional as Jacob, moving seamlessly from Fred Perry-shirted braggadocio to timorous vulnerability and, ultimately, contrition when he comes face to face with Joan and David Hodgkinson. Julie Hesmondhalgh and Tony Hirst as James' parents could simply just provide a masterclass in fortitude and stoicism – which they do, up to a point, but it's the flashes of anger, of anguish and frustration, which make their performances so special. Ultimately this is a powerful meditation on morality, fuelled by the assertion that people can – and do – change.
