Foam by Harry McDonald. The Finborough Theatre, 118 Finborough Road, London SW10 to13 April 2024. 3✩✩✩ Review: William Russell.

“Powerful, disturbing, violent and not for the faint hearted.”

A first rate cast carry this interesting butpredictable play about Nicky Crane (Jake Richards), a young skinhead trolling for sex in a public lavatory who meets Mosley (Matthew Baldwin) a persuasive Fascist – it is some time in the early 1970s – and is introduced to another world of violence and domination. Crane was a real person who led a double life as a gay man and as a member of the fascist British Movement. McDonald’s play follows Nicky’s life over the next twenty years and introduces some of the people he meets until like so many he has contracted Aids. He finally came out in a television documentary, was thrown out of the British Movement, and died shortly afterwards in hospital. Director Matthew Iliffe keeps the action moving, but although the ever adaptable Finborough space has been transformed into a Gents lavatory one cubicle, one wash basin and one urinal means that what happens never quite convinces. The encounters just don’t follow the rules of the game as Nicky gets more and more involved in hard core sex, domination and violence – making someone lick his boots, the bribe he was given by Mosley to persuade him to join the British Movement, for instance, punching someone where it hurts the most, failing to be aroused on demand and making use of a used condom. It is not a play for the faint hearted. The fight director has to be complimented on his training especially given how close the audience is to the action. Nicky first meets Mosley, a suave middle class man out picking up recruits for, among other things. Kishore Walker is impressive as the naive young gay photographer he meets and then as a pornographer who introduces him to new things, Keanu Adolphus Johnson is a scary and violent supporter of black rights, and Matthew Baldwin changes completely into the caring Craig who tries to look after the very ill Nicky. But somehow we learn very little about Nicky, and he is a forgotten figure now so one’s interest in it as a true story is not all that great. He seems just to have been a to go for sight wing the real problem is he is not famous enough for one to be interested in his story – he did not change the world and was, briefly, a “to go to” thug when people wanted to talk to the far right. The insights into how he was what he became just are not there.

Cast

Matthew Baldwin – Mosley.

Jake Richards – Nicky Crane.

Kishore Walker - Gabriel.

Keanu Adolphus Johnson – Bird.

KishoreWalker – Christopher.

Matthew Baldwin – Craig.

Keanu Adolphus Johnson – Nurse.

Creatives

Director – Natthew Iliffe.

Set Designer – Nitin Palmer.

Costume Designer – Pam Tait.

Lighting Designer – Jonatham Chan.

Sound Designer – David Segun Olowu.

Fight & Intimacy Director – Jess Tucker Boyd.