REVIEW: MR JONES AN ABERFAN STORY at Finborough Theatre 28 Oct – 22 Nov 2025
‘an impressive debut in confident storytelling’ ★★★★
We are in a coal-scarred, intimate space that glistens in blackness beneath the lights. A rugby shirt is cast to one side, and we hear the heart-tugging sounds of Welsh children’s choirs. Stephen Jones, not quite eighteen, is on a glorious high, having just scored the winning goal that’s propelled his team into the finals. At first, he speaks to someone unseen who is unresponsive and then to a young woman, his sweetheart, Angharad Price.
Writer, Liam Holmes as the irrepressible Stephen Jones performs alongside Mabli Gwynne as Angharad who is more mature and grounded. This sweet love story moves fluidly through time, and the duo present engaging performative chemistry, sparking off one another, flirting, scheming, and dreaming with a joyful musicality to their diction, proudly undulating and Welsh. Angharad hopes to go to Australia and study law. To Jones, even Cardiff seems like a distant land. He feels secure here in Aberfan.
The title of the piece, Mr Jones, an Aberfan Story, might suggest a disaster play, on an epic scale perhaps with elements of documentarian story telling. Nothing could be further from this personal and banterish two hander of 80 minutes. The Aberfan national disaster of 1966, in which 144 died including 116 children at the local primary school when 150,000 tonnes of black coal waste descended to bury them alive, makes Aberfan a premier league black spot alongside places like Hillsborough and Dunblane. But beyond an ominous wind that blows and a rumbling in the distance, something like “thunder” but that goes on “too long” - an effectively unsettling sound design by James ‘Bucky’ Barnes - the disaster is never spelt out or explained.
The power of the play works on the same principle as the film, The Zone of Interest, by Jonathan Glazer which depends on the audience already knowing what carnage is happening in the background. Through the experience of two young innocents - Angharad is a local nurse so up close and personal to the disaster while Stephen finds himself catapulted into the centre of the storm – this is a disaster distilled – and those who know of the tragedy will feel it in their gut.
The horror is all in the subtext and what the audience bring to the drama. But those who don’t know the Aberfan story, who perhaps didn’t do their research or read the provided material, will struggle to understand where it’s going or to fill in the gaps. We learn through the characters, it wasn’t just bodies buried beneath the coal waste, but the hopes and dreams of a generation. The trauma cut deep and the grief of those left behind affected all those around them. Mr Jones, An Aberfan Story explores survivor guilt and the trauma experienced by the those who awake one day, to find their family or friends inexplicably vanished. It’s an impressive debut in confident storytelling by writer/actor Liam Holmes that elevates the work beyond exposition into pure feeling, expression, and experience.
MR JONES AN ABERFAN STORY at Finborough Theatre 28 Oct – 22 Nov 2025
Finborough Theatre, 118 Finborough Road, London SW10 9ED
28 October – 22 November 2025
BOX OFFICE https://finboroughtheatre.co.uk/production/mr-jones/
Photography: Ali Wright
