'Ilford Boy' review — this thoughtful period drama weaves a funny and desperately sad tapestry

Read our review of Danny Lee Wynter’s new play Ilford Boy, now in performances at the Donmar Warehouse to 28 November.

Summary

• Ilford Boy comes to the Donmar Warehouse
• Danny Lee Wynter’s thoughtful play follows a family in the 1980s and 90s
• Among the excellent cast are Ria Zmitrowicz, Jodie McNee and Craig Stein

Ilford was not an easy place for non-conformers to grow up in the 1980s and 90s. Homophobic and racial slurs were so commonplace they were passed off as terms of endearment, yet the racially motivated, unprovoked murder of Stephen Lawrence not so far away was a looming reminder of just how dangerous standing out as a person of colour could be. Meanwhile, the rise of AIDS was being used as ammunition to fuel anti-gay hostility. It’s against this backdrop that Danny Lee Wynter’s thoughtful, unhurried play unfolds.

Tim Sheader’s production positions the piece with an affectionate nod to kitchen sink realism. It takes place entirely in the open-plan living room of Mrs S (a warm and whimsical Lindsey Coulson), where opinions are shouted fiercely, but all are welcome and accepted for who they are. It’s home to adult daughters Tillie (a uniformly excellent Ria Zmitrowicz, with a zest for partying), Jackie (an irritable Jodie McNee, furious with the male sex), and Ann (an entertainingly gobby Charlotte Jaconelli).

It’s also a refuge for Tillie’s best friend Pat (a majestically poised Craig Stein), dodging his own parents while exploring his identity as a gay man, and for Tillie’s tough nut partner Ken (a bullish Aaron Gill), it’s a space to explore a softer side.

The timeline jumps from 1980, when Mrs S’s children are finding their adult feet, to 1995 when her grandson, 14-year-old Ted (Leo Whitfield Harris, in a touching stage debut), is making sense of his own identity. The musicals-loving Mrs S has introduced him to the voice of Barbra Streisand, as she did Pat before him, and in it, Ted has found something that makes his heart sing.

But the latter timeline opens in the wake of Mrs S’s death, when the family are trying to make sense of themselves without their anchor. Ted – skulking and sullen – is suffering. So it feels karmic when Pat returns to the home, shining briefly and brightly as his quasi-mentor. Pat’s spectacular tap dance to Streisand’s "Don’t Rain on My Parade", which bursts through the naturalism of Wynter’s script, is like watching a canary break free from its cage.

Props to the hair and make-up team for facilitating rapid flits between the two timelines: mullets, afros and more are all swiftly switched out, as are outfits (studies of the respective eras by Ryan Dawson Laight). A pregnancy bump appears to be grown and shorn then grown again – sometimes in seconds. Beneath the surface, though, this extended family undergoes big changes over those 15 years. While Jackie’s black cloud moodiness matures into salty, righteous feminism, Ken finds himself slipping into the violent imprint of his father.

It’s reminiscent of Beth Steel’s Till the Stars Come Down in its hyper-naturalism: hair is blowdried and a roast is eaten in real time. There’s a little of Billy Elliot in Ted too, as he finds himself torn between the boxing gloves Ken wants him to wear and Mrs S’s musical tapes, which he adores. Wynter himself grew up in east London and presumably pours some of his own experiences into what ultimately unwinds as a by-turns acutely funny and desperately sad tapestry of a very particular time and place.

Ilford Boy is at the Donmar Warehouse to 28 November.

Photo credit: Ilford Boy (Photos by Helen Murray)