Peter Viney's Blog

By Gary Owen

Directed by Rachel O’Riordan

Set and costume by Hayley Grindle
Lighting design by Jack Knowles
Sound design by Gregory Clarke

Dorfman Theatre, National Theatre, London

CAST

Catrin Aaron – Barb
Paul Brennan – Col
Anita Reynolds – Cath
Callum Scott-Howells- Romeo
Rosie Sheehy – Julie

I admired most the way the play started with broad comedy at the start with Romeo, a single dad, with a tiny baby, living at home with his drunk mum who is unwilling to help with shitty nappies. Not that they can afford nappies or baby wipes. It slowly shifted to romance, then to tragic, before ending unexpectedly, not fairy-tale romantically, but realistically.

It relies on its two magnificent lead performances. Rosie Sheehy is a known quantity, a highly charismatic lead actor, as Julie. She’s fresh from three major leading RSC roles too. She is a convincing eighteen, and she will be able to get away with playing that age well into her thirties. She is matched by Callum Scott Howells, who we have never seen before. The two work so well because they exude chemistry. All five actors stay on stage the whole time, simply moving into the shadows at the back when not speaking. The great majority of the play is two-person dialogue, with brief intervals with three working together. Romeo and Julie dominate, though the other three all give convincing cameos.

Callum-Scott Howells as Romeo, Rosie Sheehy as Julie,

Julie’s  mum describing being a carer, sitting next to Julie at the front in harsh spotlight, is an outstanding performance by Anita Reynolds. The themes are hard hitting. Teenage pregnancy, abortion, teenage aspiration, love, – all feature, but there are no plot spoilers here,

Paul Brennan as Col, her dad. Anita Reynolds as Cath, her adoptive mum

They’ve surrounded the young pair with three powerful actors. Paul Brennan is her tough ‘cruel to be kind’ father. Anita Reynolds is the adoptive mother who took Julie on as a tiny baby when her birth mum died. She says it’s the best thing she ever did. In contrast, Romeo’s mum, Barb, tries to get him to have the baby adopted. She wants rid of it.

Catrin Aaron plays Barb, Romeo’s mum. Lest you think the name Romeo unlikely, one of my grandkids was in a class with a Romeo, Elvis, Ringo and Dallas. Elvis and Ringo were brothers. In Gary Owen’s text, Romeo is ‘Romy’. The baby’s name is Niamh (“Neeve”). At the beginning, Barb shouts ‘Romeo Anthony Jones!’ to her son, and the text adds:

She says it Row-Mayo. As in Alfa,

There are flashes of comedy throughout, even in the heavier sections.

The play needs a regional setting. This is a co-production with the Sherman Theatre, Cardiff, so South Wales. It needs to be in a poor area. Romeo’s mum is an alcoholic and ‘underclass.’ Julie’s parents are aspirational working class, her adoptive mum a carer, her dad an industrial worker. Julie is very bright, and destined for Cambridge University entrance. Romeo is a bit thick and as a single dad, stuck there, and also as sole carer, stuck with being unemployed, normally a female fate. Julie initially offers to babysit for him but has not the slightest clue about feeding babies.

That said, it could be any region. It’s done with Welsh accents, and there are Welsh pointers in the script like Romeo’s use of ‘Fair play’ and place names like the Pen-y-Lan Leisure Centre. The programme has lengthy articles on the Splott area of Cardiff and on the preference among aspirational families nowadays for Welsh-medium schools.

The themes are universal, and I would say any director could switch the region with minimal work on the text (drop Fair Play) and a switch of accent. For example, the educational difference between Julie and Romy would be crystal clear in my town, Poole, where we still have a single sex grammar school / secondary modern system, so Parkstone Grammar v Turlin Moor. Even in the majority of towns with comprehensive school systems, there is normally a well-known post code difference with better school areas and worse schools areas.

The programme has a long article on the move by more educated parents to use Welsh medium schools for kids. Why? There are two brief passing mentions in the play, the second that Romeo was too thick for a Welsh-medium school – poorer families stick with English.

Barb I woulda sent Romy to Welsh school, but he’s too thick.

It seems of peripheral interest and not worth such a lengthy programme note. My mother’s family was from Tredegar and English speaking, though one uncle decided to learn Welsh in his 70s. I worked with a director from Tredegar and his family was Welsh speaking and he was surprised that I knew none. As in Ireland, everyone is able to speak English. This came up over Russian claims about the number who could speak Russian in the Ukraine and they thought this gave them some sort of right to bomb, murder, torture, rape and kidnap. The writer said ‘try making the argument that all the English speakers in Ireland should therefore be subject to English rule.’Over 98% of the Republic of Ireland speaks English within the family apparently. I think that insisting ‘television’ is telefision and Conway is Conwy on signs is a touch unnecessary – I’d be happy with either. There was a recent article on how the teaching of Welsh in schools in mainly English speaking areas deterred foreign doctors and nurses from moving to Wales with their families which depleted the health service which relies on them in England and Scotland. I have been in play parks in Pembroke where nearly all the little kids were speaking Welsh so I am aware that Welsh is spoken at home in some areas. However, areas of South Wales spoke an English dialect hundreds of years ago. I just thought the programme article odd and at an extreme tangent. Maybe it won’t be in Wales where the production continues in Cardiff twelve days after the National Theatre run, and the subtle kudos of a Welsh medium school will ring bells, though as Julie is studying physics I doubt that the textbooks are in Welsh.

I was also mildly dubious on accent. It’s not the accent of my relatives in the Valleys, nor of the Gavin and Stacey sitcom set in Barry, but then again this is an 18 year old generation in Cardiff and I can accept that it’s different and that my relatives were my age or even older than me. Accents vary over a dozen miles in many places. Both Callum Scott Howells and Catrin Aaron (his mother, Barb) trained at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff, so are certainly going to be right, and the others seem consistent with them.

Julie says that at her Cambridge interview a posh girl asked if she was at a good school. Meaning a public school, and she misunderstood and said yes, her Welsh medium comprehensive was a ‘good school’.

Julie When I said I went to a comprehensive, she freaked out.

That’s out of date, I think. I also got that ‘posh girl’ from the play text. I either misheard it on the night (because of my own pre-conceptions about interviews where I was always asked what my father did) or they tweaked it to interviewer. Oxbridge do award ‘post code points’ to applicants from poorer areas and are under great pressure to increase the percentage from state schools. It used to be true though at all levels.

There’s also the comparison of Cambridge and Cardiff universities, with Cambridge held vastly superior. Cardiff is part of the Russell Group of 24 leading research universities in the UK, and ranked 26th last year. It’s not a new university created from an ex-poly, and I doubt Cardiff would make an offer of two C grades at A level to her (which would be ‘a piece of piss’ she says). Cambridge is obviously ‘better’ in league tables, but mainly because it would stand her in good stead forever that she had managed to get a place there. To suggest the teaching is better is dubious and insulting to Cardiff. Oxbridge terms are shorter, and past graduates have complained to me that there’s an aspect of choosing the brightest and then just letting them get on with it- in arts subjects at least. However, this must resonate with Rosie Sheehy who is doing the lines, because she was at RADA which is the drama school equivalent of getting into Oxbridge, but probably even harder.

There are some hard truths for younger audiences about boyfriends and girlfriends, and the unlikelihood of teenage romance surviving absence in university education. They need to know.

Would an 18 year old male with a baby thrust upon him after a one night stand be allowed to become sole carer? Unlikely, I think.

Look at those discussion points. These are signs of a play that had you thinking and talking about it afterwards.

The performances are five star, as is the handling of the themes. It is a bleak setting, and maybe too heavy on two part interaction for a full five rating- I like more ensemble playing. I liked it enough to buy the play text. And in spite of the programme, it’s not ‘about’ Wales at all, but it resonated so much, I’ll go for five.

*****

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID

We’re a bit late. Last performance, but it goes back to Cardiff, and then National Theatre productions do pop back up in the West End.

Five Star
Sam Marlowe, The Stage *****
What’s On Stage *****

Four Star
The Times ****
Nick Curtis, Evening Standard ****
Telegraph ****

LINKS ON THIS BLOG

RACHEL O’RIORDAN (Director)
The Beauty Queen of Leenane by Martin McDonagh, Chichester 2021

ROSIE SHEEHY
All’s Well That Ends Well, RSC2022 (Helena)
Richard III, RSC 2022 (Lady Anne)
King John, RSC 2019 (King John)
The Whale by Samuel D. Hunter, Ustinov Bath 2018
Strife by John Galsworthy, Chichester 2016

ANITA REYNOLDS
Bartholomew Fair, Wanamaker 2019
The Merry Wives of Windsor, Globe 2019
Absolute Hell, National Theatre 2018