★★★

“The energy expended by Samuel and Ward is exhilarating”

The Actors Touring Company revives its production of Dave Harris’s thought-provoking play from Stratford East two years ago with newcomer Clifford Samuel stepping into the role of Tambo alongside Daniel Ward’s original Bones. It’s a strange piece, certainly, with the opening scene revelling in its Beckettian absurdity. Tambo (top hat and tails) and Bones (waist coat and bowler) are minstrels in a fake world of painted scenery and cut-out trees (Set and Costume Designers – Sadeysa Greenaway-Bailey and ULTZ).

As the pair’s antics verge closely on clowning, the chemistry between the two actors is immediately evident. But there’s an edge in the comedy which splits this audience; some laughter from the stalls suggests it’s the funniest thing ever, whilst others are hearing the darker overtones. The pair discuss how they can escape their situation; Bones wants to perform cheap tricks for our money, whilst Tambo would like us to understand the history of the black person’s experience.

Moving forward, the pair are now hip-hop stars and the second scene is an extended live performance. The two men bid to out rap each other whilst a DJ at the back mixes the beats. Is it the director himself, Matthew Xia, in his persona of Excalibah behind the mask? Stage smoke and powerful lighting (Ciarán Cunningham) provide the stadium performance atmosphere. The energy expended by Samuel and Ward is exhilarating but for the predominantly white middle-aged audience, it’s also rather bemusing. If there is something to be learnt through the poetry, then we don’t get it.

The futuristic third scene with its Orwellian overtones shakes things up again. The stage is stripped bare and, in a brave piece of writing and direction, our two heroes passively narrate the story of the history of the new world whilst two white robots mime the action. Jaron Lammens and Dru Cripps as X-Bot-1 and X-Bot-2 provide the performance of the night. There’s surely never been a better choreographed and performed scene of robotic movement than this. Disappointingly, a final piece of action important to the ultimate meaning of the play and that should be devastating in its effect misses its punch.

Dave Harris’s play won’t be to everyone’s taste, with the long central hip-hop performance particularly divisive. But there is no questioning the commitment, versatility and brilliance of the performers.

BACKSTROKE

Donmar Warehouse

★★★

“Greig’s encapsulation of the sandwich generation – elderly parent to care for and young children too – is a masterclass in empathy and subtlety”

There’s a sign on the wall on the way into the Donmar theatre warning patrons about the use of herbal cigarettes in the production. There is no sign pre-figuring the far greater traumas the audience is about to experience: the indignity of death, the intrusions of humiliating healthcare, the cruel tricks of a failing brain.

Little wonder then that daughter Bo is keen on a swift departure for Beth, her mother, who has suffered dementia of late, and debilitating strokes.

Bo frets about everything, always has done, so she’s extra keen to convey to the nurses that her actions are merciful and not, as they occasionally hint, cruel and self-serving. Indeed, this was her mother’s repeated wish – pills, pillow over the face, nil by mouth etc.

She was a firecracker in her day, indomitable and difficult, full of life – not this half-inhabited skeleton.

Writer-director Anna Mackmin mines her own experiences to inform a difficult piece that leaps back and forth through time to capture scenes from a fractious mother-daughter relationship.

There are significant problems with the play, but the casting decisions mitigate many. Tamsin Greig as everywoman Bo and Celia Imrie as the feckless bohemian Beth paper over many a structural flaw. They are superb. Funny and touching and bracing. Greig’s encapsulation of the sandwich generation – elderly parent to care for and young children too – is a masterclass in empathy and subtlety.

Bo is dowdy, unkempt and frazzled, scratching out a life in the grout between vast slabs of thankless obligation. Her mother – a peacock in her day – has spent years pointing out her daughter’s shortcomings to the point where Bo has seemly embraced the criticisms in a grim homage. And yet, occasionally Beth (never “mum”) is an inspiration too, a source of joy and laughter.

Fittingly, designer Lez Brotherston’s stage has the operatic hospital bed on a raised stage, surrounded by medical paraphernalia and appearing more like a courtly throne. A step down and we’re in Beth’s ramshackle cottage, firmly frozen in the free-loving 1960s. Here she keeps her loom and her woven artworks. A vast black backdrop fills in some gaps with scratchy projections.

Unfortunately, the play – as baggy as Bo’s “Greenham Common” cardigan – has nowhere particularly to go with this set-up and offers few revelations beyond the Ab-Fab dynamic of selfish mother and attendant child.

There’s a certain shocking delight watching Celia Imrie swear like a trooper or provide a play-by-play recitation of her sexual antics, but this is always going to offer a diminishing return.

Director Anna Mackmin has failed to press writer Anna Mackmin on some key questions. Is it worth two hours? What do we learn? Does the play need another few minutes in the oven to be truly ready?

Her script captures scenes from their life when Bo is six, 18 and off to university (needy mum is desperate not to be left behind), in her 30s, 40s and so on, as though Beth’s failing brain is compiling a highlights reel. But once we have seen one flashback, we have seen them all, and the absence of progress ramps up the need for mawkish sentimentality as filler.

The saving grace is experiencing Tasmin Greig close up in the Donmar’s intimate space. She manages to find grandeur in the gruelling mundane and it is compensation enough.

TAMBO & BONES

Royal & Derngate Theatre

★★★

“The energy expended by Samuel and Ward is exhilarating”

TAMBO & BONES

Royal & Derngate Theatre then UK Tour continues

Reviewed on 11th March 2025

by Phillip Money

Photography by Jane Hobson

Previously reviewed at this venue:

TAMBO & BONES

TAMBO & BONES

TAMBO & BONES

BACKSTROKE

Donmar Warehouse

★★★

“Greig’s encapsulation of the sandwich generation – elderly parent to care for and young children too – is a masterclass in empathy and subtlety”

BACKSTROKE

Donmar Warehouse

Reviewed on 21st February 2025

by Giles Broadbent

Photography by Johan Persson

Previously reviewed at this venue:

BACKSTROKE

BACKSTROKE

BACKSTROKE