Back from a mini tour of Yorkshire and Stockport and cheering for supporting act Indignation Meeting
Riveting accounts of father-son relationships
Fatherland 6/6/18
ALISTAR FINDLAY is mesmerised by this multiple ‘Visions of Scotland’ assault on the audience’s eyes and senses
The Star's critics ANGUS REID, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MICHAL BONCZA reviews I Am Love, The Penguin Lessons, Freaky Tales, The Thicket
MAYER WAKEFIELD has reservations about the direction of a play centered on a DVLA re-training session for three British-Pakistani motorists
New releases from Steve Knightley, Jupiter & Okwess, Jason Palmer, Lisa Knapp and Gerry Driver, Kin'Gongolo Kiniata, Ingrid Laubrock/Tom Rainey, Dan Sealey, Simin Tande, PAZ
Peter Mitchell's photography reveals a poetic relationship with Leeds
A uncomfortably misogynistic authorial voice that sometimes seems to lack insight troubles FIONA O’CONNOR
Fatherland
Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith
STYLISH, slick and totally engaging, this exploration of father-and-son relationships grabs the audience from the outset.
Its visuals and sounds are a collage of impressions recorded from a series of interviews with men from the creators’ home towns of Corby, Stockport and Kidderminster and Simon Stephens’s script, jointly created with director Scott Graham and composer Karl Hyde, cleverly sets the play within the context of its development and questions its own premise, validity and even its title.
The interwoven interviews blend the mundane, funny and painful. Recollections of growing up are interlaced with violence and deaths alongside, literally, soaring moments of parental elation. The unarticulated nature of many father-and-son relationships is explored, highlighted and refined within the context of life in the post-industrial towns.
More from this author
SIMON PARSONS is discomfited by an unflichingly negative portrait of motherhood and its trials
SIMON PARSONS applauds an insightful state-of-the-nation play that explores the growing class divide in South Africa
SIMON PARSONS applauds a tense and thoughtful production that regularly challenges our political engagement and prejudices
SIMON PARSONS questions whether a dark take on Shakespeare’s Seasonal comedy is in harmony with the original text
