In his 2018 play The Political History of Smack and Crack, Ed Edwards made the connection between government policy and the 1980s epidemic of heroin use. Narratives about criminality tend to see illegal activity in isolation but this playwright cares about cause and effect. Socially disruptive behaviour, he would argue, does not happen by accident.
In a less developed way, he does the same thing in this vehicle for Mark Thomas, which frames the tale of a juvenile offender through the lens of colonialism. As Edwards presents it, the violence meted out by the British army in countries such as the former Malaya was a legalised version of the violence passed down from returning soldiers to their families. In their wake, they leave abused partners, damaged children and broken communities.
The playwright also sees a moral cost of a colonial past. If we have condoned a rich man’s plundering of a foreign country for resources such as rubber and bauxite, how can we condemn a poor man for robbing a wealthy house, liberating the “nice things that are built on the killing”? The rot sets in from above.
If it feels as though there is a bigger play trying to get out, one that might explore these connections more fully, the playwright’s perspective nonetheless gives political heft to a powerful monologue about childhood vulnerability and vanishing hope.
Performing in characteristically emphatic style, at turns funny and ferocious, Thomas charts the life of a bright young boy – surname England to drum home the analogy – who goes from lawless household to juvenile detention centre, courtesy of home secretary Willie Whitelaw’s “short, sharp shock” policy under Margaret Thatcher.
What Edwards and Thomas do so movingly in Cressida Brown’s production is build a portrait of a boy who is alive with enterprise, energy and empathy but lacks the direction needed to turn those qualities into something positive. Housebreaking for the thrill of it, getting high as an emotional escape, he has too little experience of stability to know how to deal with it when it comes his way. The promise offered by Martha, his former social worker, comes at a greater cost than he can afford.
At Roundabout @ Summerhall, Edinburgh, until 27 August. Then touring until 9 December.
