Theatre

Familyman
Until May 31
This event has finished
Theatre Royal Stratford East, Gerry Raffles Square, London, E15 1BN
Rating:
By Tamara Gausi

Posted: Mon May 12
Families, man. Ask Philip Larkin, or Caesar Ramsay – the indomitable patriarch of Rikki Beadle-Blair’s rollicking, bittersweet comedy – they fuck you up. Brought up on a steady diet of neglect and beatings by his young, single mother, 34-year-old Caesar (Gary Beadle) has scaled the wall to middle-class comfort. But when his 17-year-old son repeats history by getting his teenage girlfriend pregnant, years of pent-up fears and frustrations erupt with startling consequences.

It may begin as if the first page of the script was left at the photocopier, but an MC battle between Nelson (Ricci McLeod) and Caesar marks an arresting start to Dawn Reid’s excellent production. Reid manages to draw out both the light and considerable shade in Beadle-Blair’s writing, so although you may cry with laughter at Caesar’s mother’s child-rearing prescription of licks (beatings), licks and more licks, at least one of those tears will acknowledge the painful root of the ‘spare the rod, spoil the child’ philosophy that so many Afro-Caribbean parents subscribe to and Beadle-Blair so bravely explores.

Terrific performances all round, the (in)famous audience at Stratford East and the interplay with brisk direction from Reid make for an evening as lively as theatre gets. Former ‘Real McCoy’ stalwart Llewella Gideon produces an early contender for comedy performance of the year as Caesar’s unforgettable Jamaican Cockney mother. Beadle is menacing as the irredeemably misogynistic and volatile Caesar, though his character lacks the emotional depth to evoke any level of sympathy. At the core of this family sit-com lies a striking elegy to the fathers who stay yet remain absent.