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Danny Lee Wynter’s coming-of-age, coming-out story should resonate well beyond the particular circumstances of its protagonist. Ted is a mixed-race adolescent trying to come to terms with his sexuality in a dysfunctional family, but his struggle to find himself amid confusing role models and the expectations imposed by family life will strike a chord with anyone who has wrestled with the pressures of becoming an adult. Matters come to a head when Ted’s grandmother, the family’s emotional centre and moral compass, dies. The young man is left with Tillie, his weak-willed mother, still entangled in a relationship with her estranged, physically threatening husband, Ken, and two aunts whose own relationships reveal similarly unequal power dynamics. Although Tillie is sympathetic to her son’s emerging sexuality, she lacks the strength to challenge Ken’s insistence that Ted conform to a rigid notion of masculinity, expressed most forcefully through sport and boxing. However, Ted’s fight to be himself takes a radically different turn when a new role model enters the ring in the shape of Patrick. Out, outrageous and defiantly proud, he offers a striking alternative to the family’s rigid expectations. Wynter’s characters are impressively three-dimensional, and even the bullying Ken and the timid Trevor are given back stories that take them beyond caricature. A uniformly strong cast rises to the challenge of Wynter’s writing. Lindsey Coulson brings warmth and quiet authority to Eileen, the grandmother whose presence holds the family together, while Gershwyn Eustache Jnr gives Ted’s father, Ken, a menacing physicality underpinned by the pain of childhood abuse. Ria Zmitrow conveys Tillie’s weakness without losing sight of her underlying sympathy for Ted, while Jodie McNee, as the practical, acerbic Jackie, provides a sharp counterpoint to her sisters’ subservience. Ultimately, however, this show belongs to Craig Stein and Leo Whitfield-Harris. Stein is gloriously over-the-top as Patrick, his flamboyance and exuberance expressing a man who embodies strength and self-assurance without the need to exert power over others. Stein’s first-act finale is a particular delight, unleashing an infectious energy and joy almost entirely absent from the rest of the family. Making his professional stage debut as Ted, Leo Whitfield-Harris is equally impressive, but in a more restrained manner. He captures the adolescent mixture of defiance and curiosity, allowing Ted’s growing self-awareness and assertion of identity to emerge with subtlety and conviction, never pushing the emotions too far. Together, their performances give real force to Wynter’s central idea, that finding the courage to be yourself becomes all the harder when the people who should support you are themselves trapped. Ilford Boy is grounded in a particular time and place, but its message is universal.
Rated: ★★★★
Reviewed by J.C.
Photo by Helen Murray
When, Where, Getting there:
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