TIFO – Lion and Unicorn, London

Writer: Kieran Dee

Director: Grace Millie

Among the multitude of mostly pink faces surging through London on World Cup Day this summer, there may well be more than a few characters like Kerry Matthews. As a crowd they might seem boisterous, even threatening; as individuals they may be lonely, damaged and vulnerable.

Kieran Dee performs his own work, with spirited direction by Grace Millie. He creates a likeable Everyman character who gets into familiar messes – his phone goes off at a funeral, he puts a precious business card in the washing machine – and doesn’t intervene in a racist attack. He ‘doesn’t mind’ his job in a call centre – at least it gets him out after Covid – and he keeps a post-it note of conversation starters on his computer screen. Some Tottenham supporters might call him ‘a nebbich’ (not a term of abuse, but not a compliment either). When he first hurtles on stage, bellowing out a not very rude song, he is waving a stick of celery.

It is impossible not to compare TIFO with Clint Dyer’s and Roy Williams’ Death of England sequence. Like them it is a monologue dealing with racism, football and fathers. Both feature England flags and a funeral. However, while the latter plays address large issues of national identity and racial prejudice, TIFO is primarily about one traumatised young man. The question of whether or not to boo the players taking the knee is not seriously discussed. Kerry’s brother and his steadily drinking mates chuck around words like ‘Marxists’ without ever considering what they mean, and Kerry, not wholly accepted into the group, observes uneasily. If the play makes any political statement, it is about poverty and lack of opportunity. Kerry lives in ‘a tiny room’ with mould growing up the wall. Of the two helpful women in his life, one is about to lose her job and the other sleeps in her car. He finds himself explaining economics to a little boy as a pie, ‘and we only have a small piece of that pie’. He also acknowledges that ‘some people don’t even have a place at the table’.

It’s not a gloomy play. Dee is often touching, but more often hilarious. He brings a broad range of characters to life, including a bad-tempered priest, Luke the brutish brother and Mandy, the bawdy manager of the launderette. He can switch with alarming rapidity from bone-headed thuggishness to self-effacing sweetness. He is warm and engaging, and his social reflections are sharp: ‘You know when people owe you an apology – they always say they’ve been meaning to get in touch’. There is plenty of genuine comedy – including a demonstration of how different nationalities react to goals. For the British, he suggests, it’s the only opportunity to vent their feelings, so a nil-nil draw means a whole week of emotional constipation.

This is a face in the crowd that deserves to be noticed.

Runs until 5 February 2022