SONS OF YORK. To 27 September.

London.

SONS OF YORK
by James Graham.

Finborough Theatre Finborough Road Brasserie 118 Finborough Road SW10 9ED To 27 September 2008.
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat & Sun 3pm.
Runs 2hr 20min One interval.

TICKETS: 0844 847 1652 (24 hours. No booking fee)
www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk (reduced full-price tickets online)
Review: Timothy Ramsden 14 September.

Gathering dramatic pace as the seventies struggle to their end.
James Graham’s third slice of 20th-century English politics for the Finborough is a striking piece. Especially when it settles down after a hectic opening with an excess of words that don’t clearly explain why Jim, his nurse wife Brenda and teenage son Mark are moving in with Jim’s tough father and mentally damaged, physically incontinent mother in west Hull. It leaves questions; why does Brenda not bother when Mark fails to fetch her blood-pressure gauge from the car? The verbal overlaps seem over-deliberate.

As 1978 shades into 79, the new Humber Bridge opens up the city, while strikes and blackouts bring a Tory election victory nearer. The generations are divided; granddad sternly supports strikes, Jim’s torn while Brenda sees her patients’ needs. Young Mark, apparently withdrawn but drunk on punk as a sudden, dizzying spell of headbanging shows, has to hide from grandad that he’s staying in education rather than following in the family trucking tradition.

And once Graham, and the actors in Kate Wasserberg’s increasingly taut production, are in their stride, all goes well. There are no easy answers. Grandad shows principle, but is wedded to a past seen in flashbacks, as Mam rises from incoherence to sing with him in their old club act. He can let neither it, nor her, go.

So well is all this established that some of the most intense and crucial moments in later scenes are played in silence, and one through the clashing sounds as Brenda discontentedly slaps down cutlery, which acts as rhythmic accompaniment to a musical flashback with her in-laws.

Each performance resonates: Colette Kelly lost in Mam’s own, sometimes agonising world, William Maxwell resolute and commanding as certainties slip slowly from under him. And Barry Aird’s stern anxiety as Jim struggles against his father’s influence while Kazia Pelka’s Brenda bears upon him with her awareness of how fragile this old working-class solid has become. Steven Webb matches comedy and a strong sense of a future that daren’t yet express itself amid all these adults in a strong play that catches a microcosm of England on the cusp of transformation.

Mam: Colette Kelly.
Jim: Barry Aird.
Dad: William Maxwell.
Mark: Steven Webb.
Brenda: Kazia Pelka.

Director: Kate Wasserberg.
Designer: Alex Marker.
Lighting: Tom White.
Sound: Andrea J Cox.
Costume: Jenny Lee.

2008-09-15 00:51:45