Review: DEATH OF ENGLAND: CLOSING TIME, @sohoplace

It only premiered last October, but Death of England: Closing Time, the final chapter in Roy Williams and Clint Dyer’s state of the nation triptych, not only retains its spine-frosting freshness, but feels more dangerous than ever. Not just because it dives headfirst into the socio-political quagmire of race and identity in 21st Century Britain when the very same dynamics disentangled on stage fuelled violent riots on streets across the country. But because it dares to argue that love shines through storm clouds of hatred.

For all its macro-political chest beating, the dramatic potency lies in the humanity throbbing at the core. Carly and Denise were the fulcrums in the previous chapters, their inescapable presences looming off stage. Carly is Michael’s sister and Delroy’s partner to the dismay of Denise, Delroy’s mother. Now Carly and Denise are former business partners solemnly packing up cardboard boxes of Denise’s West Indian café; the air is heavy with barbed resentment after Carly’s latent racism emerges in a drug fuelled rant fetishising black culture.

There is something Punch and Judy about the incessant bickering: Erin Doherty’s cartoonish physicality shimmers from Red Bulled hyper-vitality to cowering with the childish vulnerability of a scolded toddler sent to the naughty corner. She bounces sparkly off Sharon Duncan-Brewster’s graceful elegance as a world-weary Denise, heavy eyes searching for solace as her shop faces closure, and her dreams with it.

Tinged with exhaustion, Denise’s accent slips into Patois when her indignation seeps through the brave face with which she arms herself against the world. A stark reminder that she is fragmented between cultures as much as she is countries.

But writers Roy Williams and Clint Dyer celebrate that tendrilled messiness. They hurl polarised perspectives crashing together like tidal waves to find the threads of joy that entwine the two together; Doherty and Duncan-Brewster conjure combustible humour: an icy scowl can slink into a warm smirk as fiery arguments quell and melt into tight-knit friendship. 

Now that all three are performed in a cycle can the triptych fully unveil itself. How do we inherit from the past and what will we pass on to the future? The two slalom over ULTZ and Sadeysa Greenaway-Bailey’s St George’s Cross set, and the lighting rig blossoms into a Union Jack when Denise denounces the Royal Family as “gangsters.” The political trumpets ring loud, but the humanity beneath it echoes louder.

Read our reviews of Death of England: Michael here and Death of England: Delroy here 

Death of England plays at @sohoplace until 28 September

Photo Credits: Helen Murray

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