Photo credit: Helen Murray
Ilford Boy
by Danny Lee Wynter
The Donmar Warehouse, Earlham Street, London WC2 | until 2026.
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Review by William Russell
“Warm hearted well performed family drama.”
Funny and sad this family drama is about how Ted, a fourteen-year-old boy copes with the fact that he is actually gay while his aunts and uncles and his parents squabble round the family home and he is torn between loving musicals, especially with Barbra Streisand – it is way beyond the time being a friend of Dorothy – and his brutish father's wish that he take up boxing as a hobby. The performances are all beautifully observed with Leo Whitfield Harris making a most promising debut as Ted, but director Tim Shreader really needs to get everyone to speak a little more clearly. The Ilford patois is sometimes impossible to understand and just why the very stylish set, meant to be the home of the matriarch of the family played by Eileen Coulson, should have two doors leading to the kitchen is irritating as people keep going out through one and coming back through the other and never through the obvious one. The plot covers what follows when Patrick, an adopted uncle and friend of Ted's mother, turns up to attend the wake following the matriarch's death. He is gloriously flamboyantly gay and realises just why the boy is so ill at ease. Later the sisters and their husbands, one of whom is an arrogant Moslem taxi driver, squabble over the dinner table as they set about emptying the house turn now up for sale. It is then that the clash between being a friend of Barbra or a boxer boy reaches its climax for Ted when his father and Patrick clash. Highlight of the evening is when Patrick brings act one to a dazzling end by launching into a spectacular dance routine to Don't Rain on My Parade in which he charges all over the set. It bodes well to become one of those moments in the theatre people talk about for ever. The play is a warm-hearted chronicle of life when Aids was rampant and coming out was sometimes impossible to do drawing apparently on Lee Wynter's own experiences and deserves.to draw the town for the performances alone but a little more clarity of speech would help greatly. The woman next to me turned at the interval and asked could I make out what they were saying because she was having problems, so I realised I was not alone. It was also noticeable that the laughter did not always come from the whole audience which adds to the case for setting the dialect and voice coaches to work.
Cast
Lindsay Coulson – Eileen
Cary Cunningham – Trevor
Gershwyn Eustache Jnr – Ken
Aaron Gill – Raj
Charlotte Jaconelli – Ann
Jodie McNee – Jackie
Craig Stein – Patrick
Leo Whitfield Harris – Ted
Ria Zmitrowicz – Tillie
Creatives
Director – Tim Sheader
Set Designer – Peter McIntosh
Costume Designer – Ryan Dawson Laight
Lighting Designer – Aideen Malone
Sound Designer – Tony Gayle
Movement & Intimacy Director – Ebony Mollina
Composer - Eamonn O'Dwyer
Fight Director – Kate Waters
Dialect Coach – Hazel Holder
Voice Coach – Barbara Houseman
Theatre, play 21 October 2026.
Photo Credit: Helen Murray
