Death of England: Delroy, National Theatre, review: a blazing performance snuffed out too soon
How’s this for the most dramatic (and dismaying) rebirth in modern British theatrical history? For the past seven months the National has been closed by Covid-19, causing large job losses and the biggest threat to the organisation’s survival since it opened on the South Bank in 1976.
Finally, with NT director Rufus Norris and team taking the bold decision to remodel the Olivier into an in-the-round space (cutting capacity from over 1,000 to around 500), it has welcomed audiences back. But with the kind of timing worthy of Puck at his most mischievous, Lockdown 2 turned the opening night of Roy Williams and Clint Dyer’s state-of-the-nation monologue into a temporary terminus.
Before turning to Death of England: Delroy – a companion piece to a monologue that Williams and Dyer (who directs) premiered at the start of the year – the new configuration and effort to reassure visitors is worthy of praise. It’s a big deal to be able to step back into this space and find its ambience still inviting, not eerily deserted.
That said, the new playing area (with some audience seating encircling a section of the stage) could hardly be more exposed. And that fits the thrust of Death of England’s gladiatorial tendency. Michael Balogun (stepping in at short notice after Hamilton star Giles Terera was laid low by appendicitis) paces and prowls a cruciform walkway which, when a red carpet is rolled out across it, plainly resembles the St George’s flag.
The earlier play took us inside the fizzing, tormented mind of thirtysomething Michael (Rafe Spall), the grieving son of a Brexit-voting, closet racist Essex flower-stall owner. We now spend 90 minutes in the company of Michael’s best mate, Delroy. A similar psychological meltdown is the order of the macho day; only this time the forces conspiring against the protagonist emblematise brutish and/or insensitive white Britain.
In the first play we gleaned that Delroy had shacked up with Michael’s sister Carly. Now she’s about to give birth to a girl, but things go awry for Delroy as he dashes for the Tube, only to get collared by the rozzers (or to use his Jamaican slang, Babylon).
“What is it about three large white men holding you against your will, against the wall, that makes you realise how small you are, how insignificant?” Balogun’s Delroy bellows as he relives the humiliation (artfully denoted by his contortions and a trio of looming white CCTV cameras). It’s a case of mistaken identity – racial profiling of the lamest and most retrogressive kind. At a stroke – and assisted by a stint in a cell – a man who considers himself a decent citizen (albeit a bailiff) gets radicalised. “I cried out – all the anger I’d hidden, all the pride I’d held in remission.”
The injustice of it feels grimly plausible, and coming in the wake of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests, pointedly topical even if the pandemic and the BLM movement aren’t part and parcel of the chatter. The script further raises the stakes by his racialised rejection by Carly, twisting in the pain of childbirth.
It runs close to blunt editorialising at points, and the quasi reconciliatory ending sounds pat. But there’s such a raw potency to Balogun’s performance, accentuated by blade-swooshing and door-slamming sounds and split-second lighting cues, you’re swept along, the actor darting between voices and moods as lighter touches cede to furious flourishes.
It’s a blazing powerhouse of a turn and suggests an NT raring to get going again. What a shame events have snuffed it out for the moment.
For news about the play’s further life onstage and (possibly) online visit: nationaltheatre.org.uk
