There’s no doubting how deeply heartfelt this solo piece of monologue storytelling from writer/performer Nathan Jonathan is. “It’s all based on a true story,” announces the flyer, and it ends on a montage of real family photographs which emphasise that reality. Yet Jonathan plays a character called David, suggesting some degree of fictional blurring of the lines.
Jonathan plays David aged thirteen-and-a-half in 2004 as the play begins, a young lad with an English mother and a Jamaican dad, who we discover grew up in the city but has moved to the unnamed small northern town of the title with his mother and younger brother to escape his abusive father. As the play unfolds, life there as the only non-white child he knows seems miserable.
Every day he has to contend with a racist bully, tone-deaf teachers and a ‘best friend’ for whom his difference is an amusing novelty, not to mention a fellow outsider emo girl who seems for a time like a soulmate, until the inevitable heartbreak of her going with someone else.
David O’Mahony directs Jonathan with plenty of energy, although the tone of easy-going ‘90s nostalgia sits unevenly with the relentless harshness of David’s journey, while the lighting transitions could be designed more smoothly. Yet David is an earnest, likeable character, which means every aggression against him hits home with the audience, just as his angered classroom recitation of John Agard’s poem ‘Half-Caste’ provides a moment of cathartic power.
A Small Town Northern Tale, Underbelly, Cowgate, until 24 Aug, 12.40pm