Death of England: Michael in the West End – review

Over four years since its premiere, Clint Dyer and Roy Williams’ state of the nation monologue has lost none of its urgency in this West End revival, which features a powerhouse performance by Thomas Coombes.

Michael is mourning the death of his flower stall-owning father, Alan, and by extension the country he claimed to love. Like many father-son relationships, theirs was complicated and full of contradictions. Alan was a family man as well as a deep-rooted racist, though he always said these views had a “time and a place” (he would suspend his prejudice when it came to customers, for example).

The 100-minute solo piece is flecked with fire, brimstone, and heavily racist language. Coombes, dressed in a white shirt that soon becomes drenched in sweat, pinballs around the four points of the red cross stage (designed by Ultz and Sadeysa Greenaway-Bailey), and often off it, as he tells his father’s story and grapples with his own identity in the wake of his death. He doesn’t so much speak as roar, augmented by Benjamin Grant and Pete Malkin’s pulsating soundscape which echoes key phrases back to him.

The script has been updated to include England’s loss to Italy in the Euros final at Wembley in 2021 (the original hinged around the World Cup semi-final defeat three years earlier). Alan’s heart gives out and he dies during a racist outburst in the wake of the penalty shoot-out, a seemingly karmic death. The funeral becomes the scene of Michael’s own cocaine and alcohol-fuelled meltdown, as he admonishes attendees including his childhood friend Delroy and sister Carly (here represented by a pair of boxing gloves and a soft toy bulldog, respectively).

One slight misfire is a scene towards the end in which Michael discovers a secret about his father. I won’t spoil it, but it throws his character into a very different light, to the point it feels like an unnecessary stretch – especially given the way he dies. But it does highlight Michael’s own issue with the myth-making around Alan; the way younger generations often need to deride older ones to further themselves.

Watching Michael unravel in the close confines of @sohoplace is a visceral experience; it’s like being strapped to a rocket powered by fury. Coombes hits top gear from the get-go and never relents. And, entertaining as it can be, the underlying portrait it paints, of a disenfranchised white working-class man whose anti-immigrant sentiments have been stoked by the far right, is all too believable (emerging to news of anti-Muslim riots in Southport, with chants of “England for the English”, was a sobering reminder of its topicality).

Running in rep with two other plays in the series – Delroy and, in a few weeks’ time, Closing Time – these revivals present a chance both to see these prescient dramas in context, and marvel at the way Williams and Dyer have painted such a detailed picture of a country and its myriad complications.

You can read the review of Death of England: Delroy here.