DEATH OF ENGLAND: CLOSING TIME
Clint Dyer and Roy Williams’ Death of England plays find their ending in Closing Time: a close to a bold trilogy that addresses the state of Britain as it pertains to race, class, identity and in its finale, gender.
The play is preceded by Michael (a working-class white man with a racist father) and Delroy’s (Michael’s black best friend) stories, two childhood best friends who are forced to confront the realities of their upbringings and relationships with race and life in Britain, and each other.
Closing Time picks up a short time after Delroy and we learn that Delroy’s mother Denise (Sharon Duncan-Brewster) has ventured into a business with Carly Fletcher (Erin Doherty), Michael’s sister and the love of Delroy’s life. The only thing the two women have in common is their love for Delroy, and their now failed business. Denise, pro-black, hard working and principled is unimpressed and borderline disgusted by Carly who is loyal and eager, but highly emotional and irresponsible.
We learn early on that their business, part-florist, part-Jamaican patty shop has been forced to close. It becomes clear that it was because of something Carly did, although she tries to defer some blame to Denise, and as the play’s events unfold we see it did more than just destroy their dreams of success.
Through monologues that flitter between intense, revelatory, and laugh-out-loud hilarious, Duncan-Brewster and Doherty walk us through the struggles both feel that they face as well as their individual grievances with each other, stemming mostly from their differing relationships with Delroy. Denise sees Delroy’s decision to be with Carly as a betrayal of the values she has instilled in him, as well as her plight against the racism inflicted on her by white people, including Carly’s family. For Carly, she struggles to accept the realities that come with being in an interracial relationship with a black man, but also the guilt and wilful ignorance that comes from the deeply embedded racism she has on several occasions displayed.
Towards the end of the play we finally learn that it was a drunken video of Carly fetishising black men that went viral that resulted in the failure of their business. The video not only proves fatal for the business, but further inflames an already strained relationship with her “mother-in-sin” Denise.
Doherty and Duncan-Brewster are both dynamic on the stage, shifting between different characters and playing off the energy in the audience expertly. The story however, does lack a bit of depth in comparison to Michael and Delroy’s. Duncan-Brewster’s monologues about her life as an immigrant and black woman were powerful, and Doherty does extremely well to bring a character as complex as Carly to life. However, the play at times feels vapid, and takes the characters on journeys that fail to resonate.
While enjoyable, namely due to Doherty and Brewster’s performances, Closing Time along with the other Death of England plays, is unsettling, as it makes the audience really question the pervasiveness of racism, and whether or not we are our choices. Carly’s behaviour is deplorable, but is tempered with what seems to be sincere guilt, which seems to be a stumbling block for both her and Denise.
The nature of Closing Time feels like a boiling pot of water on a stove that settles once the fire is switched off: there is a point of frustration that seems insurmountable, until it bubbles over and just stops. One of the running themes in the Death of England plays has been whether or not acceptance deradicalises a person from their own fundamental beliefs, and this is no different in Closing Time. Is Denise’s decision to embrace Carly giving up or moving forward? And are Carly’s late apologies true repentance, or just a part of a vicious and dangerous cycle?
With Bond-movie like sound, and bold innovative lighting, Closing Time is a highly engaging and entertaining watch throughout.
While it does feel like there were some missed opportunities to develop the characters and the plot, it is still a somewhat fitting end to a groundbreaking trilogy.
★★★☆☆
By Melody Adebisi