Nathan Jonathan at Edinburgh Fringe
This was a production I definitely wanted to see.
The premise immediately caught my attention, and it’s only playing for a short run at the Edinburgh Fringe.
So don’t dawdle, lads and lasses.
They’re Just Small Town (Northern) Lads takes us back to Y2K and follows a teenage boy caught between two very different male influences: a volatile father and his gentler Windrush-era grandfather.
When he’s uprooted and moved to a working-class Northern town, however, there’s another education waiting for him.
He needs to learn the rules.
Who are the hard lads? What do you say on MSN Messenger? And, perhaps most importantly, what exactly are you supposed to do if you want to be considered a “proper” lad?
Through autobiographical storytelling and humour, Nathan Jonathan explores boyhood, masculinity and those formative experiences that can ultimately influence the kind of man a young boy becomes.
There’s a lot to unpack.
And Nathan does it extremely well.
One of the first things I noticed wasn’t actually Nathan himself, but the performance space.
The production is staged in the Anatomy Lecture Theatre, which creates an interesting dynamic between performer and audience.
We’re looking down on him.
Whether completely intentional or simply a consequence of the venue, I thought that worked remarkably well for this particular story.
It almost feels as though Nathan has been placed there for our observation and scrutiny.
Here is a young man attempting to work out who he’s supposed to be while the world around him is constantly assessing whether he’s behaving in the “right” way.
Is he tough enough?
Does he fit in?
Is he behaving like the other lads?
Is he becoming the sort of man he’s expected to become?
And there we all are, physically looking down at him.
I liked the fact that Nathan doesn’t allow himself to become trapped in the centre of that space either.
He moves around.
He acknowledges and talks to the audience.
That movement gives the performance energy and helps prevent what is essentially a storytelling-led solo production from becoming visually static.
Nathan has a confident stage presence and knows how to hold the room.
The script is also very good.
There are plenty of humorous moments throughout the production, particularly when we enter the wonderfully specific world of Y2K teenage life.
And then there’s MSN Messenger.
There’s a nostalgia trip I wasn’t expecting at the Fringe.
But the humour isn’t simply there to generate laughs. It helps establish the world Nathan is describing before allowing the production to explore some considerably more complicated territory.
At its heart, this is a show asking what makes a man.
More specifically, it’s interested in how boys learn what masculinity is supposed to look like.
That’s where the contrast between the two older male influences becomes particularly important. A volatile father presents one version of masculinity, while a gentle grandfather offers something very different.
Then Nathan enters another environment where the boys around him have their own rules about what constitutes being a “proper lad”.
For a young person attempting to work out their own identity, that’s a lot of competing information.
And that’s what makes the production interesting beyond its nostalgia.
We’re watching somebody surrounded by different versions of masculinity and ultimately having to decide which parts he wants to carry forward himself.
If I were to divide the production into two halves, I did feel that the first half was slightly stronger.
There seemed to be a little more action and momentum during that section, whereas the latter part becomes somewhat more reflective.
That’s not to say my attention disappeared.
Far from it.
The dialogue remains very strong and the production is a gripping piece of theatre throughout.
I did, however, have one query about the lighting.
At some points things became rather discotheque.
Normally I expect lighting changes within this type of production to happen relatively subtly, but there were moments where the lights changed quite rapidly between brighter and much darker states.
Initially, I found it a little strange.
Then I started wondering whether that was precisely the point.
Was the lighting reflecting Nathan’s internal thoughts?
Were those rapid transitions between brightness and darkness representing the contrast between the person we’re seeing externally and what is happening internally?
If that was the intention, I can understand the creative decision considerably more.
I’m not entirely convinced the meaning communicated itself clearly enough to me in the moment, but it certainly made me think about why the choice had been made.
And theatre that makes you question a creative decision afterwards isn’t necessarily doing something wrong.
What isn’t in question is the quality of the performance.
Nathan Jonathan delivers a superb performance.
Solo theatre is unforgiving. There’s nowhere to disappear, nobody else to pick up the momentum and no ensemble around you to carry a scene.
Nathan doesn’t need one.
He commands the space, delivers the humour confidently and handles the more vulnerable elements without losing the audience.
The production is also superbly directed. There is clear thought behind how Nathan uses the unusual performance space and how the story moves between humour, memory and its more serious exploration of masculinity.
And the audience clearly loved it.
So did I.
They’re Just Small Town (Northern) Lads is funny, nostalgic and thoughtful, but underneath all of that is an important examination of the messages we give young boys about what being a man is supposed to mean.
Some of those lessons are spoken.
Others are simply absorbed from the men and boys around them.
Eventually, though, every boy has to decide which version of masculinity he wants to take forward into adulthood.
Nathan Jonathan turns that journey into a gripping and superbly performed piece of theatre.
And because this is a short Fringe run, I’ll repeat myself:
Don’t dawdle, lads and lasses.
★★★★★ 5 Stars A superbly performed exploration of boyhood, masculinity and belonging
https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/they-re-just-small-town-northern-lads
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