There’s trauma comedy, finding laughter in the very worst moments of our lives. But there’s space too for quite-a-sticky-period comedy, a notch down on the scale of bad stuff that happens, but no less significant in the lives of those lucky enough to keep actual trauma at bay.
That’s Liam Withnail’s mode in Big Strong Boy, which, from a vantage point of modest career success in his mid-30s, revisits a mild crisis weathered half a lifetime ago. In his unassuming hands, it takes the shape of a lovely story about misfit adolescence, family love, the guilt we carry – and redemption.
Now resident in Edinburgh, Withnail transports us back to his youth in Dagenham, the support of whose tourist board he is unlikely be currying. In a town where, at least back then, homophobic abuse would follow on the slightest deviation from sartorial norm, young Liam does not fit in. He tries and fails to have a love affair with his “indie sleaze” soulmate. With his brother, he steals his dad’s Guinness, aged only seven, triggering a precocious alcohol habit. It spirals, he gets depressed, Dagenham starts feeling less dead end, more death sentence.
Notwithstanding the volume of booze consumed, Withnail knows this is dramatic small beer. But it means a lot to him, to his mum, with her addiction to ALL CAPS text messages, and to his “leprechaun” dad. In an artfully structured show, directed by Jet Vevers, Withnail reconsiders this period in response to the question “Are you happy?”, which catches him cold. Was he then? Is he now? One of the story’s key players resurfaces in the present day, helping absolve our host’s guilt and make peace with the unwise teenager he once was.
A churl may argue that the show’s charge by this point is more sentimental than comic. For my money, Withnail gets the balance right. Fine jokes about Grenade protein bars, generational reactions to comedy, and his parents’ indulgent child-rearing style keep the heart light in this tale of a teenager in panic, and his adult self letting him off the hook.
At Monkey Barrel, Edinburgh, until 24 August. Then touring from 4 October.
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