One of the things that theatre can do well on occasion is provoke debate long after the play has finished, forcing the viewer to challenge their existing opinions and think through why they hold them.
Daniel Rainford as Tom, Lee Braithwaite as Owen, Alfie Friedman as Connor & Janie Dee as Sara | Photo © Alex Brenner
So it is with Laughing Boy, the play of Sara Ryan’s autobiographical book about the death of her 18-year-old son Connor after he moved into an NHS assessment and treatment unit 11 years ago.
Written and directed by Stephen Unwin, the story starts with Connor already dead but shows him in flashbacks as a growing boy living with the ever-loving Sara, her partner and his four siblings.
He has autism, learning disabilities and epilepsy, but his childhood is presented as happy and settled, where he can follow his obsessions with buses, coaches and septic tanks.
But when he becomes adult, his behaviour turns aggressive to the point where he is committed to a local unit as the family is no longer able to cope.
A few months later he drowns in the bath at the unit during an epileptic seizure, and questions begin to arise over the level of care and culpability of the staff there. The managers, however, try to deflect blame and the case escalates to a trial.
The story is undeniably poignant and desperately sad, but also takes time to highlight the love and fun in Connor’s childhood. There are some powerful moments, such as Sara’s last look at her son before the life support is turned off, and the cast attack the script with passion.
Janie Dee’s Sara is a raw fully-rounded combination of love, patience, frustration, rage and regret, with moments of unspoken guilt underlying.
Opposite her, Alfie Friedman gives us a highly appealing Connor, restless, bouncy, but in the end vulnerable and questioning. His appealing, fragile performance provokes the question why the family felt no longer able to cope with him, but then of course we are looking at him retrospectively through his mother’s potentially rose-tinted memories.
Unwin tells the story against a plain concave cyclorama, using frequent video projection by designer Matt Powell to show journeys, text messages and, poignantly, footage of the actual family.
Staging is very minimal – just four chairs and Connor’s toy bus throughout – which at times makes it feel like a small-scale university production; this is reinforced by the device of having the four siblings multi-role as a myriad of care workers, NHS chiefs, barristers and even the family dog, each stepping forward for their innumerable brief scenes.
It is a device which doesn’t really work in a theatrical setting – this would have been more effective as a television drama or documentary (especially as much of Sara’s dialogue is simply narration out front), and reached a much broader audience.
And as to the aforementioned questions it raises, they are many. I saw the play with a friend who works in the care sector, who was rightly angered by the one-sidedness of the play, in which all NHS workers are either incompetent or self-serving – at no point is it shown from their point of view.
How are they to do their job fully in a sector which is underfunded and rarely has enough staff? What realistic difference would the much-awaited apology actually made to the bereaved family?
Controversially, what even is the purpose of the play? Of course it makes us feel sorry for the family’s loss, and anger that an innocent boy died within a closed-ranks health service, but to what end?
Sara says herself in her programme notes that the legal processes will never end – so what more is the play doing that getting angry at a system that, without huge reform and funding, is destined to carry on the same way?
Reminiscent in this way of many broadsheet papers, it asks all the angry questions without suggesting any possible solutions.
Laughing Boy is showing at Theatre Royal Bath until 8th June. Box office: 01225 448844.
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Reviewer: Steve Huggins
