Shows performed by a single actor, usually lasting around the hour mark, are increasingly popular, especially in these days of straitened economic times and the desire of audiences to experience new theatrical productions, which can be combined with a drink or meal to provide a rounded evening’s entertainment.
Such shows are a significant challenge for the writer, actor and production team. Concentrating on one individual for more than an hour, however inventive the narrative and lively the performance, can be a steep ask of an audience. We require a compelling story, bags of energy, and thoughtful, nuanced acting skills to succeed. This is especially so when the show is unashamedly of a personal, autobiographical nature.
The performer must maintain their audience’s interest, provide a powerful narrative and develop an empathetic response from them. A task not for the faint-hearted or uncommitted.
Such is the challenge facing Tony Bell in his show The Man in the Rain. It is a challenge that Bell clearly relishes and largely meets.
From the very beginning, as the audience files in to be greeted by a largely bare stage, a family photograph back projection and a handful of simplistic costumes and props, it is clear that Bell intends to take his audience on a journey through his own life, particularly exploring and reflecting upon his difficult, sometimes tortuous, relationships with his father and mother; relationships that have moulded him, and propelled him into determining the life choices that he makes.
Sweeping effortlessly and seamlessly through his childhood, adolescence and his move into adulthood, Bell delivers a multi-textured performance; at one moment a child playing football, being lightly bullied at a scout camp and forced to sing at a school assembly, at another dealing with his first relationships, stressed out by examinations and drama school pressures, before haltingly at first and then more confidently, forging his own career as an actor. But always seeking his parents’ approval.
There are a number of moments throughout the narrative that will elicit smiles of recognition from anyone who grew up in Britain in the late 1960s/early 1970s. Describing his formative years, Bell’s dialogue is genuine, and his characterisation is often amusing and invested with appropriate levels of self-deprecation.
As the narrative progresses, things become darker, and, like Tony himself, the audience begins to realise that his evocation of this typical middle-class life is not idyllic. This is particularly the case where we go into greater detail about Tony’s relationship with his father. Through Tony’s eyes, we see his father go from being a man excited by having a young son, to experiencing the frustration of career stasis leading to his becoming an emotionless, reserved and remote figure whose relationship with his wife eventually becomes abusive, both physically and mentally.
Similarly, no punches are pulled in Bell’s depiction of his mother, as her frustration with the social and professional limitations determined by the ingrained sexism of the period takes its toll on her own mental well-being.
The narrative swings from light humour to dark despair and frustration, but always with the balance well maintained. The conclusion of the piece is especially haunting and poignant, with the frustration of not having the confidence to say what we really feel intermingled with recurring themes of loss and regret.
Bell is a confident and engaging performer. He is not afraid to occasionally break the fourth wall and address the audience within the context of specific situations, whether that be in an awkward, yet moving, peroration at his father’s wake, or a haranguing of a pantomime audience on the day of his mother’s funeral.
The production adroitly interweaves genuine family photographs and home movie footage to add an additional dimension to the flow of the narrative.
Similarly, the utilisation of the few props is well thought through. The use of a folded jacket to portray an infant, which, when shaken out, then serves to depict a toddler’s first steps is particularly inventive and striking.
Bell is also well versed in the subtle art of delineating his characterisations effectively. Occasionally, there are rapid, three-way conversations between the young Tony and his father and mother, or the older Tony and his fellow schoolmates or acting students. At all times we know who is talking to whom, and how they are feeling. No mean feat.
In lesser hands, such a production could be in danger in lapsing into the self-indulgent or narcissistic. Not in this case. Bell’s portrayal of his own life and relationships, especially with his parents, is never less than engaging, sometimes warm and funny, sometimes bleak and dark.
Whilst there is a palpable sense that this production is a cathartic one for the actor, it is a performance that never becomes so inward-looking as to exclude his audience. The real beauty of this piece is that Bell’s depiction of his life and relationships draws us into his world and makes us care about those people populating his life too.
A finely observed, thoughtful, and ultimately moving, piece of theatre.
Review by Johnny Oxford
“Come to Daddy. No, not to Mummy, to Daddy. That’s it. Knees bent. Best foot forward.”
Alan and Dorothy have great plans for Tony, their miracle baby. He’s going to conquer the world, as soon as they’ve found the right recipe. Cocooned in seventies suburbia, Tony thinks he plays drums like Keith Moon, football like Bobby Charlton, and warbles like Donny Osmond. Meantime Dorothy teaches him radical feminism while Alan serenades with Gilbert and Sullivan.
A hippy guru awakens Tony to the joys of free love and an acting coach propels him into the West End until family secrets catch up with him. This poignant, funny play explores how parents and children navigate their differences and asks why some choose to perform and others choose to watch.
Written by and starring Tony Bell
Directed by Caroline Faber
Lighting Designer and Sound Technician: Nural Wardani
Associate Lighting and Sound: Egi Amarudin
Quiet Light presents
MAN IN THE RAIN
Jack Studio Theatre, 410 Brockley Road, London SE4 2DH
19 to 30 November 2024
