A family in mourning. A man in crisis.
After the death of his dad, Michael is powerless and angry. In a state of
heartbreak, he confronts the difficult truths about his father’s legacy and
the country that shaped him. At the funeral, unannounced and
unprepared, Michael decides it is time to speak.
Thomas Coombes stars in this scorching and fearless play which asks
explosive and enduring questions about identity, race and class in Britain.
Staged in rep for the first time and sharing press performances on 30 July, Michael and Delroy have gone off without a hitch, with Closing Time beginning previews on 22 August. While the shows can still be seen individually, they’re dynamite in rep, the interconnected stories and different narrative perspectives offering a far richer understanding of what it means to be British when viewed together.
The world has changed since Clint Dyer and Roy Williams’ sweary, swaggery, dysfunctional near-family first railed about their lives, shaped by Brexit Britain, in fast, fulminating dramatic monologue. As a trilogy of plays, it began with Michael, the son of a racist flower-seller, originally played by Rafe Spall, who told his lairy story at his father’s funeral. Then, a monologue by his Black British best friend, Delroy, about police profiling and his mixed-race relationship with Michael’s sister, Carly. These revivals are updated to reflect our world, post-Covid and post-Boris so we recognise the antagonised politics of class, masculine identity and race hate currently coursing through our society, from far-right violence (Southport is not named but it may as well be) to Nigel Farage.
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