Stage-to-screen review: Death of England: Closing Time

The show I was due to see tonight got cancelled at the last minute, so I replaced it with another show that I'd missed the first time, and that I'd been keeping in my back pocket for just such an occasion: I had a ticket to Death of England: Closing Time's premiere at the Dorfman in 2023, but my performance got cancelled when Jo Martin fell ill. I wasn't too worried about missing the latest part of Clint Dyer and Roy Williams' increasingly epic project as I knew it would turn up on NTatHome sooner or later, which it now has: It played in rep as part of a trilogy (the made-for-TV Face to Face seems to have been quietly forgotten) that played in rep last year at @sohoplace, the theatre with a name so current it's working on a gag about what "Zig-A-Zig-Ah" means that it'll find a punchline for any day now.

The platform has also added the new versions of Michael and Delroy from that West End run. The series of plays began as a commentary on race in modern Britain as seen through the eyes of a white man confronting his father's overt racism, and his own subtler prejudices, but by the time we got the next two instalments it had expanded to the story of two families, one black and one white, who have been inextricably linked for years and look set to be so for the rest of their lives. As such anyone who's seen them all will have had a picture built up of not just the two men narrating the story, but also of a number of supporting characters, particularly Carly, who's Michael's sister and Delroy's on-off girlfriend, and mother of his baby daughter.

In this, presumably final chapter, Carly (Erin Doherty) is finally shown in a two-hander with Delroy's mother Denise (Sharon Duncan-Brewster,) with whom she's set up a business. As the title suggests, it's not gone well, and the play takes place as the pair prepare to shut the doors for the final time and hand over the keys to the buyer. Admittedly, the combined florist shop / Caribbean kitchen might have struggled anyway, and the two acknowledge that a food shop that smells of fertiliser carries unique challenges, but there's also a video of a drunken Carly making racist remarks that went viral, leading to the shop being boycotted and the business failing.

First though we get the story of the two women's fractious but ultimately loving relationship as it built over the years from the moment Carly first met Delroy and the two fell for each other. After being resistant to her charms Denise becomes incredibly fond of her "daughter-in-*mumble-mumble*" which is what makes it particularly personal and hurtful for her, not only to have her actions contribute to them losing all their money, but to see that kind of betrayal. One angle Closing Time particularly deals with is Britain's colonial history, tied up in a scene of them all watching Charles III's coronation (ironically enough, given Doherty's most famous screen role.)

She and Duncan-Brewster are predictably powerful and moving, and the in-the-round theatre means designers ULTZ and Sadeysa Greenaway-Bailey can return to the cross-shaped set of the original 2020 production; the conceit of having the actors run around the stage collecting and arranging props adds extra energy. The play continues the sequence's mix of pointed social commentary with humour and genuine heart, and while the focus is understandably on how the majority perpetuate inequality, the writers are nuanced enough not to make it a simple heroes and villains split: In a incredibly harsh scene Denise's black friends and family are positively gleeful at the prospect of her being dragged down into failure by Carly's comments.

The characters we meet over these plays aren't blameless, but we're firnly on their side: If Death of England is a tragedy it's because a blended family full of genuine love have it constantly challenged by internal and external racial factors; if it isn't one it's because Williams and Dyer seem to believe the side of love will win in the end. (For all their friction the women are there for each other on this stressful day, while the boys are at a football match.)

If the original monologue felt like a watershed moment of black writers voicing white characters in a play about race, the ever-expanding project feels like quite a wider achievement in theatre as a form now: Given it's by its very nature playing to smaller audiences, it's extraordinary to see a theatrical story allowed to expand, spin off and explore different angles in a way that's a lot more common in film and TV. I think that, having given all the main characters their voice this might be the right time to stop putting this family through the wringer, but whether as a trilogy or, if they let Face to Face back into the fold, as a quartet, I suspect Death of England will have a further life both on stage and in classrooms.

Death of England: Closing Time by Clint Dyer and Roy Williams is available to stream on NTatHome.

Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes.

Photo credit: Helen Murray.