The award-winning writer, Henry Naylor, is back at the fringe with Monstering the Rocketman and it’s a must see, Jeremy Welch says.
★★★★★
This production comes after his two award winning plays at previous fringes, Afghanistan is not Funny and Let the Bodies Pile. He doesn’t disappoint with this production.
In this play we see Naylor at his best, the writing is well researched and factually correct, fast moving and wonderfully written, he really is one of our best playwrights.
He combines the written work with a dazzling performance that grabs the audience’s attention from the very first line and keeps the audience in his thrall throughout the one-hour solo performance. Utterly compelling.
The play is based around a sexual smear campaign against Elton John by The Sun resulting in one of the largest libel payouts in press history.
The Sun was at the time under the ambitious and combative editorial control of the most powerful newspaper editor in the world, Kelvin MacKenzie.
Naylor, as a junior red top hack, narrates us through the sewers of the late 1980’s gutter press, their underhand and, on occasions, illegal methods to get that headline and increase sales figures.
The light is shone on the political infighting and intrigue within The Sun and the battle with other tabloids to be the first to get the ‘gottcha’ headline.
He introduces us to the mighty thugs of the press room, the excitement and danger of working with fellow hacks, megalomaniac editors and all powerful press barons. It’s truly wonderful stuff.
Exciting, fast paced and delivered with extraordinary skill by Naylor. For me, this is a must for Fringe 2025.
Monstering the Rocketman runs until 24 August at Ace Dome at Pleasance Dome.
Find Me is the true story of the state or in this case the horrific shambles that is the mental health services in the UK, Jeremy Welch finds.
★★★
The play centres around a family whose youngest child, Verity, suffers from mental health issues.
At a young age she was a solitary figure and non-communicative and as the years progress her mental health deteriorates resulting in a spell as a resident in hospital where she sets fire to some furniture.
The result of which is that she is sent to Broadmoor institute and can only be released by permission from the Home Secretary. That in itself starts the questions being asked.
The audience follows that narrative through the three members of her family. A loving and doting father doing all he can to bring stability to the family and the life of Verity. The brother of Verity who is ashamed of her and wishes nothing to do with her. Finally, a loving mother at her wits end.
Through the narration we enter the byzantine world of the state system at its most dysfunctional.
It is seemingly impossible to get Verity into care to begin with, once in care it seems the ability to cope with fairly minor instances of mental health issues result in her expulsion from care.
To complete the deadened hand of the bureaucratic nightmare she is committed to Broadmoor for something that would normally result in a suspended sentence at a magistrate court.
Verity is now, and still is, incarcerated at Broadmoor and her freedom at the whim of the Home Secretary. A truly chilling tale.
The script is good and delivers well the emotional hell for the family as a whole and the different reaction of the individual family members to Verity’s illness.
The primary actors are fine but let down by the support cast whose delivery was awkward and halting. A good script that could have been delivered with a bigger punch if the acting performances were more polished.
Find Me runs until 9 August at Space 1 at theSpace on the Mile.
Bitter Baby is a production trying to deal with too many big subjects all at once, Jeremy Welch says.
★★
This production got off to an unfortunate start. The actress who was to perform in this solo production pulled out for no apparent reason the night before leaving the non-acting producer and writer to perform her work at a moment’s notice.
If that was difficult enough to execute, she had the additional challenge of delivering the script and performance in her second language. I admired her grit.
The script was based on a true story about the struggle of an immigrant PhD student learning English and searching for work to keep up with the financing of her studies.
Due to the high expense of studying for a PhD and the meagre pay from the gig economy the protagonist fell into sex work as a prostitute. Firstly, as a call girl and latterly as a Sugar Baby to rich lonely men. A rather depressing tale. Hence the title Bitter Baby.
The end result for her was the slow destruction of her soul until she extricated herself from sex work and found a mildly fulfilling job, below her capability as she was an immigrant and with her imperfect English was perceived by her employer as less capable than her non-PhD peers.
There were too many subjects in the script, immigration, student poverty, gig economy wages, sex work and perception of capabilities due to the lack of fluency in a foreign language.
The script would have been much improved by choosing fewer subjects to explore and those in more detail. As it stands it’s a patchwork of subjects, related for sure, but lacking in providing a coherent narrative arc.
Perhaps the solo performance would have been more coherent if the actress had not bailed on the production.
As I mentioned at the start none of this distracts from the courage of the writer’s determination to deliver her play as best she could. That in itself is admirable and courageous.
Bitter Baby runs until 25 August at Dirty Martini at Le Monde.
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