Copy of Review: BACON by Sophie Swithinbank at Finborough Theatre until 2 April 2022

‘Superb performances in this hard-hitting production’ ★★★★★

I’m going to go straight in and say that both performances in this play (Corey Montague-Sholay as Mark, and William Robinson as Darren) were absolutely superb. The play demands a lot of both actors, the intensity of which is magnified in the Finborough’s small space. Their skill and absolute believability had me transfixed from beginning to end.

To give some context on the premise: Mark is the ‘new kid’ in Year 10. He’s nerdy, awkward, and wants to do well in school. His best friend is his dog. His mum loves him but also loves her yoga sessions. Darren is the complete opposite: he hates school and is more interested in bragging about his sex life and smoking. But we also learn quickly that his dad isn’t around much, and sometimes beats him when he is. In his own way, he’s just as lonely as Mark. The recognition of this turns their relationship from bully/victim, to friends, to almost-lovers. Then, after a culmination of awful events, Darren does something which changes everything, something unspeakable.

Sophie Swithinbank’s script has the boys speak to us directly, a device which can feel cheesy but here feels necessary to highlighting both character’s essential loneliness. They have to speak to us, because no one else listens to them. The action actually starts in a café where Mark works, four years after the main events of the story, where Darren has suddenly reappeared in Mark’s life. As Mark proclaims, this is his story, and he wrestles control to ensure we remember what was done to him, rather than allowing a morbid fascination with the perpetrator.

The sparse set too emphasises these themes: the script describes the setting as a ‘sad playground’, which in the Finborough’s production was reduced to a seesaw. The character’s young age and complete naivety of the consequences of their actions were epitomised here. It was stark and bleak. It also allowed the actors to demonstrate physical dexterity as they walked on and balanced the see-saw, showing the shifting power dynamics between the boys. Their inherent duality was shown by the frequent sharing of lines, their two stories occurring in parallel with each other, their lives so different yet inevitably intersecting.

I’ve suggested the darkness of the play, but it had moments which were laugh out loud funny. Mark’s open awkwardness was the perfect foil to Darren’s teenage insolence, and Darren’s immediate defensiveness and deflection of anything remotely personal was very recognisable (to someone like me who has taught teenagers for several years!) There is something heartbreaking in seeing young characters unable to express who they really are, in this case, their sexuality, which is denied in a society which demands that they simply ‘fit in’.

If I am going to be critical of anything, I would say that sometimes I feel like the actions and key events feel bigger than the play themselves: there are some incredibly hard-hitting, emotive, and distressing moments that take place on stage; I could see some audience members opposite me looking away. The scope of the play doesn’t fully encompass the emotional trauma that would be caused by these events, and so they verge towards feeling like a plot point, or ‘something big needs to happen here’, rather than something that the script explores in the full detail it could warrant. Is the play about repressed homosexuality, a coming of age story, depression, knife crime, or…? That being said, this of course has been a theatrical convention since Aristotle, and it is arguably necessary for ‘something to happen’.

That something clearly affected the actors themselves, who hugged each other after their bows. It seemed to provide the strongest acknowledgment of the horror and disgust of the actions they had just performed, and a sense that it would be alright. It was a touching moment and seemed to provide a sense of hope in what is otherwise an unflinching and unsettling play.

Photos by Ali Wright

Bacon by Sophie Swithinbank 
Finborough Theatre
1^st March - 2 April 2022
 https://finboroughtheatre.co.uk/production/bacon/

Reviewer bio:

Jonny Kemp just about manages to find time to write and paint when he's not being an English teacher at a central London 6th form. He completed a module in playwriting as part of his MA Modern and Contemporary Fiction at the University of Westminster, was shortlisted for the WRaP 2020 playwriting competition from the London Playwrights Blog and has had a script in hand performance of his short play ‘The Other Begins’ at Manchester’s Hope Mill. He loves pubs and theatres, so pub theatres are a dream come true.