A MANCHESTER ANTHEM

Riverside Studios

★★★★

“Tommy is a flawed character, but the play he finds himself in is a pretty faultless portrayal of him”

If you’re a playwright and your closest friend is an actor, what is the best birthday present you can think of? A few years ago, Nick Dawkins hit upon the idea of writing a play for his bestie – Tom Claxton – who at the time was studying at LAMDA. He filled the script with “the things we loved, the music, dancing, jokes and in jokes” and presented it to him on his birthday. A wonderful gesture. But little did he know that just a few years later it would be an even greater gift for the theatre going public. Dawkins’ sixty-minute one hander is a compellingly written monologue, spectacularly well-crafted and wrapped up in Claxton’s engrossing performance.

“A Manchester Anthem” is a mix of autobiography and biography with oodles of artistic licence thrown in, which makes it instantly relatable, even if you don’t share the background of its protagonist. Claxton plays Tommy (and a dozen other characters, but we’ll come to that), a working-class Mancunian who has been accepted into Oxford. He is the first in his family to go to university. The first in his street in fact. The play charts his final day and night before he heads down south to begin his new life.

It is Tommy’s final shift as a waiter and, just as he is about to clock off for the last time, a couple of posh and privileged school mates wander in for their skinny, soya, lattes. They are a world apart from Tommy and, in his eyes, represent the world he is about to enter. It fills him with feelings of trepidation and imposter syndrome but nevertheless he accepts an invitation to a house party that night (spurred on by encouraging words from his real mates). What follows is a high energy tsunami ride from the coffee shop to the clubs, and through the streets, houses and people at each end of the class spectrum. From the moment we first see Claxton, elastically writhing to N-Joi’s ‘Anthen’ wearing bright orange underpants, we suspect we are in for something different. On the surface, this rite of passage story has more than a shade of familiarity. There are moments when it treads that path, but the observant writing is fresh enough to veer away from its own genre.

Claxton immediately has us in the palm of his hand – and he keeps us there. A finely nuanced performance, he slips easily into the other characters with subtle precision and expert timing. His supercilious boss at the café, the posh boys, the pseudo-socialist girls, his down-to-earth-bordering-on-psychotic mates, his estranged father… and so on. The various locations are seamlessly evoked, too, courtesy of Anna Niamh Gorman’s ingeniously simple cardboard box set that symbolises the packing away of an old life, but later transforms and lights up to evoke Manchester’s clubland. Sam Baxter’s soundtrack and Caelan Oram’s lighting set each time and place in stone, while Izzy Edwards’ masterful and lively direction leaves no time for anything to be set anywhere. It is a fast-paced production, but every moment counts – and some of the best lines hang in the air, frozen for a moment for us to relish, before being swept back into the thrilling momentum of the play.

Without being a social commentary, the show mirrors aspects of society and class divide. Tommy has more chips on his shoulder than the local chippie, but there is no anger. In its place is intelligent analysis, and a fearful empathy. The various characters are soft targets. The real victim of Dawkins’ writing is society at large and the unfairness of its inbuilt hierarchies. Tommy’s greatest fear is that of betraying his origins. The fact that these issues can be dressed up in humour is testament to Claxton’s fine acting and interpretation of the text.

The final moments are quite moving. It doesn’t end with a bang. Nor a whimper. But something in between which touches us with emotional honesty. Tommy is a flawed character, but the play he finds himself in is a pretty faultless portrayal of him. Tommy might fear rejection, but “A Manchester Anthem” has no need to share that feeling. A real gift of a show.