Theatre / Reviews
Review: Social Immobility, Bristol Improv Theatre – ‘A whip-smart, brilliantly funny farce’
Anyone watching Social Immobility while also in the process of having major home building work done should brace themselves for hyperventilation.
This brilliant two-act, four-hander farce at Bristol Improv Theatre focuses on a day in the harassed life of a builder at the end of his lying, drug-fuelled tether.
The action is set in the swish Clifton townhouse of up-market divorcee Lizzie (strait-laced Ali Lidbetter), who is no match either for her two builders or her teenage daughter Lucy (the amazing Betsy May Wright).
This gem of a play has been written by Bristolian Taylor Ayling, a working-class director, writer and labourer. I just know he has been scribbling down words and incidents as they occur, because what transpires holds a lot of truth – as well as plenty of drugs, sex and swearing.
Complete with Acrow props, tranny (transformer) picnic table and plenty of macho noisy equipment, Henry, (the brilliant Benj Foster) is the man in a mess, despite his Roll-Royce hands, sawdust for spunk and stellar ability to appear frenetic while not doing a stroke of work.
He deals drugs – only to his friends – so regards himself as a sole trader. He longs to escape to Nicaragua but couldn’t spell it, so settles instead on scarpering to Benidorm, despite the fact his long-time girlfriend is about to deliver their daughter. And in any case, he’s gambled their money away.
His long-suffering side-kick, Dan, (Kieron Shaun Edwards) is really a poet in disguise, which immediately makes macho Henry query his sexuality, as he lusts after the teen daughter – saying he’d love to drink her bath water.
The daughter – who hides a secret, attending to her burner phone and nighttime work – finds herself falling for Henry. Meanwhile, the mum, similarly beguiled by Harry’s smooth-talking charming lies, touches his hand and swoons at their roughness while she spends her lonely spare time attending ‘Mums against racism’ and ‘Microplastics Matter’ meetings.
Back to business, and when building control (Nico Smith – who also multi-roles as a police officer and a hitman) swaggers in with serious questions about the job, Henry dons sunglasses in order to hide how high he is and staggers around agreeing to everything he won’t ever get round to doing.
The audience – made up of a lot of men who looked like they could be at home with DIY – absolutely loved it. They roared with laughter when Dan was questioned as to why anyone in their late 20s would train to be a carpenter, and again at the litany of excuses as to why the builders were late turning up to work, before immediately making tea. ‘Roadworks’ topped the list.
Social Immobility is a curiously apt title. Here are men who work to embellish the lives of the rich and work, literally, their fingers and backs to the bone. In this context, the sheer devilment is perhaps better seen as necessity. They are living for the day before their bodies are exhausted, let alone contemplating the struggle to escape class expectations and crippling masculinity.
Ayling has created a whip-smart script, brimming with slapstick humour and pathos. I absolutely loved his bird-eye, shark-sharp take on what builders get up to when owners’ backs are turned. These men create long-lasting beauty (and possibly a lot of strife) but Henry knows working like this for 25 years will eventually break his body – a realisation that brings an added poignancy to this study. But above all, it is very, very funny. Catch it if you can.
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Social Immobility: A Construction Site Farce is at The Bristol Improv Theatre on March 19-22 (not 20) at 7.30pm. Tickets are available at www.ticketsource.co.uk.
All photos: Adam Murray
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