Theatre Review: Ilford Boy (Donmar Warehouse)

 

Between contemporary travesties of Ibsen or the Greeks, and the endless "assembled research" ‎efforts of James Graham, Peter Morgan and the like, so much "new" writing for the British stage these days feels horribly impersonal. Sure, not every play can be a Long Day's Journey into Night, "written in tears and blood." But at least some sense of an intimate investment, of lived experience meeting sympathetic imagination in the writing, is the main reason I continue to go to the theatre. I definitely don't go for soaped-up current-events versions of deep, searching dramas, for pseudo-journalism, or - Gawd help us - for plays about John Major.

‎That current climate makes the arrival of a new play like Danny Lee Wynter's Ilford Boy a relief, a joy, even a shock - and something to be treasured. Wynter's play is gorgeously, unabashedly personal - drawing on the actor/playwright's background in a way that makes direct, intimate contact with the audience.

‎If you grew up mixed race, working class and gay in the '90s, and discovered theatre at the Donmar Warehouse (ok...hand raised to all those!), then aspects of Ilford Boy will hit especially hard. But, beyond those labels, the play has so much to offer in its portrait of family bonds and breaches, of how cultural discoveries can save, and its celebration of those who help us make them.

Williams' debut play, Black Superhero, was in many ways more ambitious and had similar moments of lacerating honesty but some of its debates around representation felt contrived, and the production's on-stage drama ended up getting a bit eclipsed by speculations about what had happened off-stage.

‎Ilford Boy feels much more organic - more "modest," maybe, but cutting deeper, too. Watching it, I thought about A Taste of Honey and Beautiful Thing and East is East and Till the Stars Come Down and that whole continuum of British plays that recognise the depths and pains and joys of the so-called "ordinary" lives that the majority of us are living. You might feel the spirit of Glass Menagerie-era Tennessee Williams, smiling down, as well. 

‎Interweaving scenes set in the 80s and 90s, the play is bookended by losses, starting on the day of the funeral of Eileen, matriarch to a clan of three daughters in Essex, and Grandma to the teenage Ted, the Wynter surrogate who's the Ilford Boy of the title. Ted's acting up seems to have various causes: grief, the confusing semi-separation of his parents, and his growing awareness of his sexuality. 

While his Dad, though often absent, has some fixed ideas about how a boy should conduct himself, the arrival of his Mum's old friend Patrick - an openly gay West End dancer - presents a different view. When Patrick takes Ted to see a certain production of Company at a certain venue (hey, who says theatres can't self-celebrate a bit!), our Ilford boy's perspective on the world starts opening up.

With its coming-of-age protagonist caught between competing versions of masculinity,  you might think of this play as a kind of domestic, queer, very English essentially comic variant on Platoon. For sure, Wynter shows that the home front too can be a warzone:  a moment in which a mother-son row turns physical is wincingly painful. 

A crucial difference, and strength of the writing, though, is that Ken (well played by Gershwyn Eustache Jnr) and Patrick aren't just representative figures but characters with specific backgrounds and histories - and the play is attentive to those places where their attributes don't just compete but also overlap. (Patrick, though now ailing, hasn't lacked physical strength, and Ken displays some unexpected cultural tastes.)

‎Patrick is the play's showiest part. The characterisation - he's quipping, quoting, sharp-tongued, stylish, swishy - will probably be critiqued in some quarters as stereotypical, but surely we're all grown up enough to also recognise its essential truth. (As a character of colour, Patrick also gives a twist to the campery that, as discussed here, has been a long-standing part of British popular entertainment.) It helps that Craig Stein is so vibrant and captivating, inhabiting the role with total conviction both in its loud and quiet moments - from his show-stopping end-of-Act 1 turn to his sharp retort to Ted when the boy questions what his mother is good at: "Loving you."

Like Till the Stars Come Down, Ilford Boy is also yet another variant on a Three Sisters play. The trio of siblings here - Ria Zmitrowicz as the conflicted mum, Jodie McNee as the fussy Jackie, hiding her hurt under fuss, interference and dog obsession, and Ann, played by Charlotte Jaconelli with some fetching Gemma Collins attitude - capture all the enduring tensions, insider humour and love of those relationships.

The structure of the play means that Eileen's close bond with Ted is more mentioned than fully felt. But, in flashback scenes and brief ghostly interludes, Lindsey Coulson plays Eileen with a beautiful straightforwardness that makes us feel we've always known this woman, even when her dialogue takes a sitcom swerve ("Don't you fucking swear" etc). I loved Aaron Gill and Cary Crankson as the sisters' contrasting spouses too -  Crankson, in particular, works wonders, revealing depths in the apparent dimness of his character, with a scrunched-up face hinting at past pain. ‎And despite an occasionally wavering accent, Leo Whitfield Harris makes a great professional debut as Ted, never sentimentalising the character, always true and reacting in the moment.

‎Timothy Sheader's production is crystal-clear and focused, managing the shifts in time without fuss, though Peter McKintosh's  fairly sparse split-level set and Aideen Malone's lighting could do with a shade more domestic warmth. 

Streisand and Sondheim may be among the show's icons but references to shopping in Somerfield, Rosemary Conley, Larry Grayson, Michael Barrymore - "poor Cheryl" indeed! - and many more make it clear that this definitely isn't a play that's begging for an Off Broadway transfer anytime soon. Rather, Ilford Boy revels in its time and place and its Britishness, sparking intimate memories and strong connection. Refreshingly, too, for all the topics it touches,  it doesn't feel for a moment like an issues play. Instead its fully invested in its characters, who are recognisably messy, awkward, funny, disappointed, joyful, talented and striving. Wynter views them all with clear-eyed compassion, and lets them take us by surprise, as people do in life. It's a funny, moving and delightful evening. 

Ilford Boy is booking at the Donmar Warehouse until 28 November. Further information here.

Further reading: 

Review of Kimberly Akimbo (Hampstead Theatre)

Review of As You Like It (RSC) 

10 Great Contemporary Black and White Films (BFI online)

To coincide with the release of Fatherland, I wrote about 10 Great Black-and-White Films of the 2020s for BFI online. You can read the piece here. 

Concert Review: Dar Williams with Heather Maloney (St. Pancras Old Church, 7/10/2026)

‎My last visit, also my first, to St Pancras Old Church was for Bartees Strange's solo show late in February. ‎I didn't know it at the time, sitting in what I can now only think of as a state of blissful ignorance at Strange's show, but something was happening that night that shattered life as I knew it: the worst, most shocking loss I've ever experienced, the kind of brutal turning point that it isn't possible to fully get back from.

‎In trying to find some semblance of meaning or hope in these intervening months - still trying, usually failing - one of the constants has been music. And one of the artists whose music has been most constant has been Dar Williams. 

I've loved Williams' work for over 15 years and consider her by far one of the greatest singer-songwriters in the world. She's a consummate folk storyteller who brings so much care, detail, wit, honesty, intelligence, surprise and quiet subversiveness to her music.

‎In Williams' writing, a line or even a word can reverberate over what you've just heard and turn a song lacerating or redemptive in a moment. Her music is always hospitable, never forbidding, but it rewards close attention - it rarely does the obvious, and you'll get more out of it the closer attention you pay. I guess it's all about what one of my favourite songs of hers, "The Blessings," calls "the gift of what you notice more."

‎Despite Williams' status as one of my all-time favourite artists, I hadn't had the chance to see her live until last week, when she played St. Pancras Old Church, with Heather Maloney as support, the first of two London dates that ended the UK leg of her European tour. It was an overwhelming experience in many ways. To sit again in that venue and hear Williams sing songs that have been beacons for me over the past months  - including the one that I ended my tribute to my much-missed friend with - was as painful as it was precious - a full circle moment that I wish I hadn't had to live through, yet that I'm also profoundly grateful for. Paradoxes, complexities, pain and healing...the stuff of Williams' music itself. 

‎As Williams mentioned during the show, she hasn't toured the UK for two albums: 2021's I'll Meet You Here and this year's equally wonderful Hummingbird Highway. If you've kept up with her work over those years, then what she performed on Wednesday night was nothing short of a dream set-list, encompassing both earliest and newest material. She opened with  "Fishing in the Morning" from The Green World and - cough-drop popped in to soothe the remnants of a virus picked up into Dublin - moved elegantly into the beloved "The Babysitter's Here" and through newest masterpieces like "Sacred Mountain," "Magical Thinking" - that beautiful report from what she called her internal battle between "optimism and delusion" - and "Little Town," which, with lived detail and without didacticism, documents a narrator's gradual change in perception about the presence of migrants in their community. Place has always been important to Williams  - so much so that she wrote a book about it, 2017s What I Found in a Thousand Towns - and few songwriters evoke its resonances as brilliantly as she does.

‎Though there's less quirky humour to Williams' studio work these days, live it's still there in spades. The magical "Hummingbird Highway" -a child's welcoming home of her ambivalent travelling parent - was prefaced by a hilarious intro, and so was the "The Ocean", although the rendition of the song that followed came out particularly fierce. "The Christians and the Pagans" created a joyous communal moment, while "After All," her sublime song about coming through depression by, among other things, engaging with her family's history, was performed following an audience member request.

‎After Heather Maloney returned for a heartwarming singalong on "Iowa (Travelling III)," Williams ended by looking back again with "February" and "When I Was a Boy," songs whose details still feel startlingly poignant and fresh.

‎Maloney herself opened the evening with the best kind of supporting set - both distinctive and complementary - her powerful, percussive acoustic guitar-work and supple vocals soaring through finely wrought songs also dealing with memory and place, loss and grief: "Let Me Stay" and "All in Your Name" were among the highlights. Williams joined her for a beautiful duet on "Woodstock" that further collapsed the decades. Maloney mentioned that she's "planting seeds" to return to tour in the UK soon; here's hoping, as she's an excellent and compelling artist. 

‎Williams also warmly recalled her "amazing"  first time in England in 1995 touring with Joan Baez, whom she paid tribute to as a great friend and mentor. 30 years on, the experience of Williams live remains an amazing one, and seeing her now step into that mentor Ohio role speaks to the deep roots and connections of the contemporary folk tradition.

‎Before attending the show, I stopped off at the music section of Foyles bookstore. There you won't find any publications on Williams' profound music - or her own brilliant How to a Write a Song That Matters - in stock, but I did see several books dedicated to the artistry of Kylie Minogue.

At such moments it's hard to know whether to laugh or cry at the absurdity of the culture. The songs that matter most may seldom get the attention they deserve these days. But their reach and life is long and they still find their way to those who need them. And the fact that artists like Williams and Maloney are out there doing it, making music that can connect so deeply and truly, remains a reason to keep going, after all.

‎

Theatre Review: As You Like It (RSC, Royal Shakespeare Theatre, 2026)

*review contains mild spoilers* 

To liberty! Somehow I haven't seen As You Like It on stage for 20 years - not since Dominic Cooke's RSC staging, with Lia Williams as Rosalind, Barnaby Kay as Orlando and Joe Mydell as Jaques, when it transferred to London in 2006. Never a favourite Shakespeare comedy of mine (Twelfth Night, seen multiple times over the years, takes that crown), As You Like It isn't, clearly, a play that I usually go out of my way to catch. But I remember Cooke's production fairly fondly.

‎Daniel Evans' new RSC production is something else, though - one to turn even AYLI sceptics into devotees. Fleet, fond, hilarious, beautifully designed by Anisha Fields, lit with flair by Ryan Day, and acted to the hilt by an all-male ensemble comprising RSC veterans and newbies, the production is bliss, and I hardly stopped smiling through its 2 hours 40 minutes. 

Actually, I don't think I've loved a Shakespeare show quite this much since the glory days of Propeller, whose work is evoked here not only in the single-sex set-up (which hasn't gone un-criticised) but also in the mix of reverence for the language, anarchic spirit, and moments of pure beauty.

‎Evans starts the proceedings not with the play's none-too-scintillating opening scene but rather with an unexpected jolt. Jonathan Groff's Rosalind is thrown right into a stark, threatening patriarchal world - a chilly court, presided over by Gary Wilmot's grim-faced Duke, that's already banished our heroine's father and is soon to propose the same fate for her.

Rehearsal photo: Marc Brenner

‎In this high-stakes context, the decision of Ros and her beloved cousin Celia to flee to the forest seems a no-brainer, but not before the former's fallen hard for Elliot Barnes-Worrell's Orlando (she's not the only character to do so, either, in this account) - after he's demonstrated his prowess in the wrestling ring.

‎The transition from the discordant, oppressive atmosphere of the court (literally a black-and-white world in Fields' design)  to the lush, liberating greenery of the forest can seldom have been accomplished more sensuously than it is here - with the usurped good Duke (Wilmot again, now wild-haired and bare-chested) introduced rolling on the ground in pagan glee.

‎In a nod to Evans' heritage, this idyllic Arden is Cymru, and Welsh song is threaded thrillingly through the action. Composer/arranger Theo Jamieson outdoes himself with beautiful arrangements that encapsulate the production's delicate but robust tone, and the cast's singing is gorgeous. 

‎In his male guise as Ganymede, Groff's  Rosalind doesn't don the mentioned "doublet and hose," but instead sports fetching hiking gear. With a glowing countenance, a relaxed air, and dark locks now sun bleached, our transformed heroine definitely seems in her natural element in Arden. 

‎Groff seems in his element as a performer, too. From Vanessa Redgrave's youthful triumph to Geraldine James's recent elder take, the role of Rosalind has been a revelatory one for plenty of British actresses -  but not for (m)any American actors in their forties.

‎However, though surely no-one expected Groff to make his long-overdue return to the British stage in this particular part, he does so with an assurance and gusto that's exhilarating to witness. 

‎It's 16 years since his West End debut in Deathtrap, and in that time Groff has developed into a very deep and special stage artist indeed. Here he makes his first foray into Shakespeare with the confidence of a veteran, and everything he does feels true, inspired, open, delightful.

‎Along with Patsy Rodenburg's voice coaching, maybe Groff's experience in musicals has helped him to find the rhythm of the verse with such clarity and skill. (And rest assured - or be prepared: Shakespearean sibilance ensures that the Groffsauce quotient is high.) Whatever, he's incredibly quick and physical too - whether bouncing up and down with glee at the prospect of Orlando's arrival (the chemistry with Barnes-Worrell is electric)  or relishing the mix of smart-alecky wit, highly-strung anxiety and tender lovestruck longing that makes Rosalind such a rich role. Aided by costume designer Colin Richmond's inspired creations, the trajectory of Groff's performance - from the fear of the opening scene to the graced joy of the finale - is glorious. 

‎Like Josh O'Connor's equally great work in the Almeida's current Golden Boy, Groff's performance here is in no sense just a star turn, though. From Fisayo Akinade's wry, watchful Celia - what a hilarious, affectionate double act the two make - to Richard McCabe, who manages to make something fresh and quietly devastating of a very queer Jaques' Seven Ages of Man speech, this is a fully inhabited production in which everyone gets a chance to shine.  

Thanks to Tim Preston's magnificently bossy Phoebe and Edward Judge's adorably lumbering Silvius, the secondary amorous muddles are much more entertaining than usual, too. A relationship I'd hardly noticed in previous productions - that between Orlando  and his elderly servant Adam (Gareth Snook) - also emerges as a beautifully touching cross-generational bond. ‎And you definitely won't forget Snook's gleeful second turn as the goatherd Audrey - beehive hair, boots and all - especially when he's waggling tongues with Greg Haiste's smitten "noble fool" Touchstone, or when his eccentric raiment meets a barnstorming Raye moment.

Such riotous touches ensure big laughs, but overall there's a deep love and kindness in this production - you feel it in the way every character is played and treated.‎ Looking around during the final dance sequence, I couldn't help but wish that the diversity of the cast was more fully reflected in the audience, since if any production could change hearts and minds about Shakespeare then this is surely the one. In any case, this is a totally enchanting evening best summed up in the words of Akinade's Celia: ‎"Wonderful, wonderful and most wonderful, wonderful and yet again ...wonderful." 

As You Like It is booking at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon until 7 November. Further information here. 

Review of Winter of the Crow in Sight and Sound (November 2026)

My review of Kasia Adamik's Winter of the Crow is in the November 2026 issue of Sight and Sound. More about the issue here.