Death of England Reviews at @sohoplace Theatre London – Death of England: Michael, Death of England: Delroy & Death of England: Closing Time

Death of England - Closing Time: "At last, a play that captures the state of the nation"

"The final instalment in Clint Dyer and Roy Williams’s trilogy features two astounding performances and feels more timely than ever"

"... what an astounding, kinetic force the pairing of Sharon Duncan-Brewster and Erin Doherty (who played a young Princess Anne in The Crown) proves to be. As in the first two plays, humour is front and centre – it can’t be a coincidence that Carly and Delroy named their mixed-race daughter Meghan. The format flows between dialogue and monologue ranging in subjects from football, virtue signalling, colonialism and both women’s scornful reaction to King Charles’s coronation, which serves to bond them further."

"Doherty and Brewster’s performances are so phenomenal that I can forgive Doherty’s occasional tendency to rattle through her lines. And with the recent spate of far-Right riots, the trilogy’s West End run feel even more timely."

Death of England - Closing Time: "Brilliantly taps into the political tensions of our age"

"The final instalment @sohoplace in Clint Dyer and Roy Williams’ excoriating state of the nation trilogy hurls you into the detritus of a small shop in Brexit Britain"

"Two tough women with tongues of flint strike sparks in the final play of Clint Dyer and Roy Williams’ excoriating examination of the state of the nation."

"The script for Closing Time grabs you by the scruff of the neck and hurls you into the detritus of the small local shop that Denise has been running with Carly as they grudgingly prepare it for a new owner."

"Sharon Duncan-Brewster is superb as Denise...Erin Doherty’s mouthy, amusingly defensive Carly doesn’t seem to be the immediate target of her simmering rage, yet as the play progresses, lightning-flash revelations show the knots and contradictions that have trapped them both."

"It would be a spoiler to describe the hen party incident that leads to the shop’s closure, but it’s a sobering demonstration of how inherited hate infects behaviour even when lived experience contradicts such prejudice. In Delroy and Carly’s baby, Meghan, there’s hope for the future, yet we’re left with no illusions about the pitfalls that future might hold."

"Death of England - Closing Time: Superb sparring partners deliver message of love in bold two-hander"

"The original stagings at the National Theatre surfed the turbulent start, middle and aftermath of the pandemic. The West End transfers, once again directed by Dyer, reference Kamala Harris's potential pres-idency."

"Sharon Duncan-Brewster gives a queenly performance as matriarch Denise whose Jamaican heritage, tempered with an east London edge, makes her a mistress of withering scorn. Opposite her is Erin Doherty still best known for playing young Princess Anne in the Crown - as sassy, swaggery, motor- mouth Carly. It's a pleasure to watch two superb stage actresses spar with one another. Both characters flow between patois and cockney - but where does assimilation stray into cultural appropriation?"

"Closing Time doesn't have answers, but it does end, heart-eningly, on a message of love and mutual accom-modation, if not outright hope."

Death of England - Michael & Delroy: "With excellent turns from Paapa Essiedu and Thomas Coombes, Clint Dyer and Roy Williams’s plays about working class England are even more powerful together"

"‘Michael’ and ‘Delroy’ were performed side by side on press night (‘Closing Time’ will arrive at the end of August). They’re both steeped in the wildly diverse attitudes and pockets of life that exist within contemporary working class England."

"‘Michael’ centres on a white, drug-fuelled and booze soaked lad about town, as he comes to terms with the death of his racist father. Set around his funeral, it requires an actor to spit out its story – and Thomas Coombes is more than up to the task."

"In the second part we hear from Delroy – Michael’s best friend of years and the boyfriend of his sister Carly. Here furiously played by Paapa Essiedu, it is the stronger and fuller of the two plays."

"The world is so vivid that if there’s a weakness here it’s that I longed for more insight into the side characters – there is the sense that this is a series that could roll on, eternally. Full of rage, love, pride and deep bewilderment, these are stories that are grown authentically on British soil and are desperate for a stage."

Death of England - Michael & Delroy: Michael ★★★ / Delroy ★★★★

"Clint Dyer and Roy Williams’ riotous plays are a little unwieldy in this revival but the antagonised politics remains clear – and Paapa Essiedu is sensational"

"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."

"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."

"It is still a feat of monologue theatre, with an energetic central performance, but Coombes’s Michael is a lovable cockney. The effect is more broadly comic with some grotesque humour, but the tortured undertow of filial inadequacy, split loyalties between his father and his friend, Delroy, and jittery mournfulness, are not felt sharply."

"Death of England: Delroy, starring Paapa Essiedu and now set in the present day, feels more loaded with the everyday police racism and humiliation faced by this working-class bailiff who makes no apologies for having voted for Brexit. The performance here elevates this play into its own, one-man coup de theatre. Essiedu has astonishing poise, bringing tragic depth and integrity to Delroy but lilting joy and comedy, too."

Death of England - Michael & Delroy: "An astonishing indictment of this country’s racism"

"A deeply confronting yet comic examination of English identity, racism, class and masculinity, starring Paapa Essiedu and Thomas Coombs"

"In examining the notion of Englishness through the lens of working-class masculinity, identity, nationalism, family, friendship and race, the writers deftly weave an intimate portrait of a fractured family as a microcosm for the nation, whose members are more comfortable doling out abuse rather than affection."

"Most impressive are Coombes’ and Essiedu’s astonishing physicality and bravura performances portraying multiple characters through switching accents and mannerisms with convincing ease. The only gripes are when the authorial voices intrude into the narrative – it’s a stretch to believe that Michael’s father who revered Oswald Mosley is the same man who would read a book by Akala, the rapper."

"This blistering cycle of plays is a compelling case for why England needs fresh ideas"

Death of England - Michael & Delroy: "These raging, raw shows are exactly what the West End needs"

"The first two parts of Clint Dyer and Roy Williams’ exploration of the white and black working-class experience are full of swagger, banter and furious feeling"

"Inflamed by Brexit and first staged (and cancelled) under Covid, I feared that Roy Williams and Clint Dyer’s exploration of the British white and black working-class experience might have dated in this West End transfer. Absolutely not. Michael and Delroy, the two male monologues in the linked Death of England trilogy (Closing Time, a female two-hander, joins in repertory later) are full of contemporary rage, swagger and furious feeling."

"Thomas Coombes and Paapa Essiedu give tour de force performances as boyhood best friends in hardscrabble East London, for whom the racial divide keeps reopening like a wound. I get the feeling the writers found their characters and just let them run."

"The tone, too, can shift from intense physicality or gutsy soliloquy to a bantering, music-hall interplay with the audience. Essiedu, with his sensitivity and charm, is particularly good at the latter, almost to the expense of his character’s integrity."

Death of England - Michael & Delroy: "Thomas Coombes and Paapa Essiedu grip in an all too timely revival of Clint Dyer and Roy Williams’s state-of-the-nation monologues"

"Less like plays than tumults made flesh, Michael and Delroy would be treasurable as records of the divisions and despair that became glaringly apparent – or more discussed – after Brexit and through the pandemic. Yet they are more than chronicles. These dramatic imaginings of the lives of two young men from Leyton, east London, whose friendship is ringed and threatened by racism – one is black, one white – twist and turn unpredictably"

"The intensity is unremitting: both plays would profit from a 15-minute tuck. Yet Dyer’s production is dynamic, helped by the clarity and drive of the design, by Sadeysa Greenaway-Bailey and Ultz."

"He [Thomas Coombes] is terrific as Michael"

"Paapa Essiedu, in a more sympathetic role as Delroy, is a wonderful combination of force and insinuation, gliding through degrees of bafflement and outrage, both frank and subtle."

Death of England - Michael & Delroy: "Death of England Michael/Delroy descends into a bewildering muddle"

"Thomas Coombes and Paapa Essiedu's energy is unflagging, but I emerged from @sohoplace feeling as though I had been buried under a mountain of words"

"The intimacy of Soho Place’s in-the-round auditorium is the optimum location for these works (which are stand-alone but grow in impact when seen together); Michael and Delroy are both solo pieces, whereas Closing Time, coming soon, is a two-hander. The venue affords a visceral sense of immediacy and proximity to characters and events and on a crafty red cruciform playing area (smart work from designers Sadeysa Greenaway-Bailey and Ultz) this is something that Thomas Coombes as Michael and Paapa Essiedu as Delroy use to maximum effect."

"Yet while the staging and performances are near faultless, the writing is more of a challenge, and not always in a positive way. For starters, the 100-minute running time of each piece is far too long, greatly outstaying its potency and, in the case of Michael, resorting to an excess of shouting. The longer the works continue, the less likely we feel it is that white Michael and black Delroy would be friends, would have managed to navigate the many challenges presented by Michael’s racist father, whose death and funeral foreground the first play and whose expectations and legacy his angry son needs to confront."

Death of England - Michael & Delroy: "Thomas Coombes and Paapa Essiedu are extraordinary"

"The West End resuscitation of Clint Dyer and Roy Williams’s two plays delivers phenomenal acting, but both are too long"

"If you want to see some of the most exciting stage acting in Britain, head to this West End resuscitation of the monologues that Clint Dyer and Roy Williams wrote for the National Theatre in 2020 and 2021."

"This [Thomas Coombe's performance] is an extraordinary display of energy, presence and outsized wit as a grieving white working-class Londoner. The imminence of his cocaine-aided crack-up is tangible."

"In the second play, as the British-Jamaican Delroy, Michael’s best mate turned frenemy, Paapa Essiedu has a supreme stage presence that is no surprise. He has been one of our best young stage actors for a while. Yet the speed of his wit and the variety of the voices he uses in this garrulous role — Delroy, like Michael, is a funny guy — are phenomenal."

"There’s a lot to love here. The writing crackles with contemporary life, while Dyer’s staging artfully uses every inch of the playing area."

"Both plays jump around in time and both are luxuriously long at 100 minutes. It’s too long. Big on good jokes and ideas but short on plot, both shadow-box their themes sometimes."

Death of England - Michael & Delroy: "Crammed with astute observations"

"Incendiary performances from Thomas Coombes and Paapa Essiedu ignite these state-of-the-nation dramas"

"The plays are crammed with astute observations and, in Dyer’s dynamic productions transferred from the National Theatre, at their best they surge with pulse-thumping power. That’s thanks in no small part to raw, unstinting performances from Thomas Coombes and Paapa Essiedu, both of whom tear up ULTZ and Sadeysa Greenaway-Bailey’s scarlet St George’s cross-shaped stage, sometimes literally. But when the propulsive emotional tension slackens, the writing can feel at once overstuffed and undernourished. A slightly tick-box quality creeps into its topicality, with over-deliberate references to Trump, Farage and Johnson, and some sequences are contrived or overworked. We long for supporting characters – neighbours, family members – who are only described or impersonated here to appear in the flesh and interact with the speakers, disrupting their single viewpoint narratives, which begin to seem airless."

Death of England - Michael & Delroy: "Tough monologues test the state of the nation"

"The drawback of the monologue format quickly becomes evident, though: it will never not be awkward to hear a white actor mimic a Caribbean accent (here, Coombes vocalising Delroy’s mum). But uncomfortable moments are fully intended by the playwrights. Black audience members squirm one minute, white ones the next, as we are all invited to dissect Englishness — backward-looking at past glories or open to a diverse future."

"Delroy depends less on props and vocal impersonation (the brutish coppers in this London manor weirdly have northern accents), more on Essiedu’s lightning speed, darting eyes and comic panache. Michael, with its less sympathetic protagonist, is for that reason the more interesting piece and the tougher task for the actor."

"Taken together, it’s striking how little ironic distance there is in the plays, with no sense that ambiguities lurk under the surface of the rapid-fire, manic speeches. That is not to take anything away from the performers’ charisma, stagecraft and mastery of the space."

Death of England - Closing Time: "Bombshell rants fail to land as the men watch the footie"

"The final part of Clint Dyer and Roy Williams’ trilogy is a bold, brash reflection on racism and working-class identity but the tone is too screamy for the tension to build"

"The women are in a kind of mixed-relationship of their own and we find them in pitched battle, clearing out their florist-cum-takeaway while the men watch the footie. Directed by Dyer, it is still a bold, brash reflection on racism, white culpability and working-class identity but its emotional power is drowned out by exaggerated and flattening comedy, the women shouting and stomping so their hostility verges on farce."

"The bagginess of the script is more glaring than in the original, too. This is an exploration of what is found beneath the surface of Carly’s attraction to Delroy, but for too long the dialogue wanders aimlessly, recapping plot, indulging in mini diatribes against their men, all men, and men’s relationship to football."

"The cast juggle between multiple characters deftly but the tone is too screamy for the tension to build, and some deliveries are so fast that lines are swallowed. Several of the high moments of the play are lost to this, including Carly’s bombshell social-media rant."

Death of England - Closing Time: "Warp-speed conclusion to trilogy on race in the UK"

"Erin Doherty and Sharon Duncan-Brewster are compelling as women in an awkward family relationship"

"In the previous plays, Thomas Coombes and Paapa Essiedu played brilliantly in the round, spinning and gambolling with manic eye contact to engage the whole audience. Doherty and Duncan-Brewster are no less charismatic and compelling, but the points when the pair turn in and interact are like a vortex, sucking the attention away from the viewer. It doesn’t help that the banter, delivered at volume and high velocity, is sometimes hard to catch. At 100 minutes (no interval) the play could last half as long again if the pair weren’t chatting at warp speed. It’s an extraordinary feat of stamina and agility nonetheless."

"More effective is the playwrights’ teasing out of what it’s permissible to laugh at in terms of race and how much depends on who’s laughing. There are two skilled, high-octane performances to enjoy here, but with its talk, talk, talk and lack of character development or incident, this doesn’t feel like a play."

Death of England - Closing Time: "The acting is flawless"

"Concluding part of the state-of-the-nation trilogy is vivid, intense and thrillingly performed by Erin Doherty and Sharon Duncan-Brewster"

"Like the two preceding plays presented, in Dyer’s productions, in this West End season, this one is at times over-deliberate and unsubtle in its drawing of direct connecting lines between the personal and the political. But, where the other pieces are monologues, this is instead a kind of hybrid that switches between fervid, direct-address confessionals and confrontational dialogue. Such is the scorching talent of Sharon Duncan-Brewster and Erin Doherty that the solo set pieces are riveting – but the writing reaches its most potent intensity when they interact. The acting is flawless; the motor of Dyer’s staging, it purrs, snarls, revs and roars, powering even the less fluent passages of the text into overdrive."

Death of England - Closing Time: "Erin Doherty is sensational, but the play is not"

"In the final play in the state-of-the-nation trilogy, the women get their say - with rambling digressions and an excess of shouting"

"The pieces are billed as standalone, but I would say that this is optimistic. This closing part of the trilogy, in particular, would have far less impact upon those who were not already well informed about Michael, portrayed by Thomas Coombes, and Delroy, as powerfully embodied by Paapa Essiedu."

"It is fascinating to watch Carly and Denise mark out their respective territory in opposing diagonal corners of the stage, as if they are boxers preparing for a fight. In myriad ways they are precisely this, as they gradually recount their own versions of events of business disaster. This is a frustratingly centrifugal narrative, with long digressions into past events of often dubious relevance"

"Duncan-Brewster conveys all of Denise’s pride, stubbornness and hopelessly mixed feelings; Carly may not be to her taste, but she is the mother of Denise’s beloved baby granddaughter Meghan. Thus, conclude Dyer and Williams, runs the uneasy state of race relations in the UK in 2024."