Consistently surprising, innovative, and hugely thought provoking adaptation of Édouard Louis‘ autobiographical novel.
📍Church Hill Theatre
📅 Aug 19 – 21
🕖 7:30pm
🕖 Running time (approx.): 1 hours 30 minutes
✍️ Based on the novel by: Édouard Louis‘
🗣️ Adapted & Directed by: Eline Arbo
🎵 Music: Thijs van Vuure
👥 Scenographer: Juul Dekker
🎬 Dramaturg: Thomas Lamers
💰 £20
🎂 18+
🎭 Wheelchair Accessible Venue, Wheelchair Accessible Toilet, Assistance Dogs Welcome
At the heart of this remarkable play, is a singular thesis: that a system designed to make the working classes expendable, in turn creates the breeding ground for hate & intolerance. Forced to fight for scraps, the economically marginalised turn their anger on the other, their perceived competition in the gutter. So it is we meet Eddy, a young boy growing up in rural France, his parents barely scraping a living in menial & manual jobs to feed, clothe and house themselves and 6 other children.
Eddy isn’t like the other boys in his village, he has no appetite for football, no urge to fight, and definitely no interest in getting a girlfriend. He would rather sing & dance his favourite dance hits, make-up the girl next door, and get far too intimate with his cousins & their friends. This doesn’t sit well with just about everybody that lives nearby, including his parents and siblings. A vicious cycle of violent ridicule, followed by futile attempts to fit in inevitably takes a progressively more horrible toll on Eddy, the future looks anything but bright.
His relationship with his parents is complex, a simultaneous abhorrence of their right-wing intolerance of anyone different from them, and a monumental pity for their despicable treatment by the state/society. They in turn want to love their son, possibly do in their own ways, but would very much prefer he get with a girl and stop being a village whipping boy.
None of which sounds like the basis for an uplifting play, but The End of Eddy is most certainly that. Before the ingrained bigotry brings Eddy to crisis he will have flashes of self-discovery, moments of joy and self-understanding. Some of his attempts to pass as ‘normal’ will have comedic fall-out, though it’s less funny when back in his room alone with his self-loathing.
The four strong cast of: Victor Ijdens, Jesse Mensah, Felix Schellekensm, Romijn Scholten are quite remarkable, a small swarm of chameleons swapping skins to play a wide cast of characters. Each will play Eddy, sometimes all of them at once, embodying the complexity of the human experience. Director Eline Arbo has achieved that surest mark of mastery in any discipline: making something very complex, look very simple. There isn’t a moment’s confusion as our four thespian heroes evolve from Eddy into his mother, father, brother, the bullies who plague him, the cousins who ‘play’ with him, and anyone else in their ecosystem. Each character is quickly recognisable from mannerism and tone, their emergence natural, ditto their exits.
The End of Eddy is also a musical play, the four polymaths on stage making for a more than adequate band on demand. Thijs van Vuure’s musical soundscape, redolent in later 20th century synth-pop & eletronica, is a pulsing, sometimes tender accompaniment to the unfolding drama. Scenographer, Juul Dekker helps ensure it’s also visually arresting, most of the play conducted within a cavernous tent suspended by pullies. It’s a world which may quite literally collapse. Within such a visceral landscape, 4 less able actors might fade somewhat, but instead they rise to a truly physical performance, equally comfortable in close quarters drama, and gripping narration.
Two aspects set The End of Eddy above the merely technically excellent and timely account of an LGBTQ experience, the first being Eddy’s own complex character. Very much a product of his socio-economic background, Eddy isn’t above casual racism, or violence, nor of exploiting girls to cover for his own internalised homophobia. He’s a flesh & blood human being, flawed as we all are, and not above castigating others who seem more effeminate than he. It’s a simple tale, but with admirable depths of complexity.
The second innovation, and one perhaps enforced by the true-life basis for the play, is that it eschews abject tragedy, whilst manifesting a believable threat of complete disaster. Neither book nor play have anything good to say about the general mechanics of the corporate capitalist system, nor do they see any hope of change for people like Eddy’s parents, but…they do know that small victories are possible, and that small victories can be the difference between life, and death.
Édouard Louis‘ book has been compared to J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy, and there are some parallels in subsequently educated children of poor rural areas reflecting on the pressures that made the worlds of their childhoods so miserable. On the other hand, where Vance lacks the wit to realise that no amount of hard work can make a broken system function; Louis’ and Arbo know better. Such clear insight offers the final sliver of hope offered by this superb, comic, tragic coming of age story. If theatre can change perspectives, then as many people as possible should see it.
(Image Credit: Andrew Perry )
By
By
