Who Killed My Father – Camden People’s Theatre, London

Writer: Édouard Louis

Director: Nora Wardell

Édouard Louis’ Who Killed My Father comes to the Camden People’s Theatre in a new production by surrogate presents, exploring the author’s conflicting feelings about his parent against a backdrop of social change. This monologue had its UK premiere last year in a production at the Young Vic directed and translated by Ivo van Hove, and while Nora Wardell’s version, translated by Lorin Stein, has a similar emphasis on inherited concepts of masculinity, the desire for parental attention and the political demonisation of the working classes, performer Michael Marcus brings a freshness to the narrative as his character slowly feels his way towards a greater understanding of his father.

As a child Édouard finds his father’s presence hard to endure, creating a volatile homelife that is filled with casual violence and occasional acts of love. Reflecting on that relationship years later, fragments of his young life return to him with every trip to the beach or Barbie Girl singalong tempered by his father’s dismissal of Édouard’s developing sexuality and physical altercations that come between father and son.

Wardell’s intimate production emphasises the silence and remoteness of Édouard’s father, layering childhood memories from different periods of the child’s life to paint a picture of a difficult and precarious existence as two forms of manliness contend unsatisfactorily. There is nuance in Louis’ writing that gives the character of the father moments of redemption, undertaking acts of kindness and understanding that emphasise how difficult it was for Édouard to navigate the uncertain mood at home.

Marcus’ performance is particularly skilled, avoiding a feeling of being over-rehearsed and instead presents the story as though Édouard is devising it in the moment, and by extension constantly thinking and analysing anew as he goes along. That works particularly well with the structure of Louis’ text which jumps between eras and scenarios as one thought leads to a chain of others, and Marcus captures well the freshness of those links, giving a sense of Édouard still figuring out what he thinks of the man he loves and despairs of in equal measure and what it means for his own sense of self as an adult.

Hazel Low and Blythe Brett create a heavier set than the van Hove production with several props that only have momentary use, including a toy Titanic sunk in a tank of water, but it implies the heavy physical and emotional baggage of the life that Édouard is describing. Better use could be made of some of these elements. however, including a dominant backdrop of photography paper used once for a silhouette and later as a posterboard for printed images of French politicians which might instead have been projected, and in fact Joshua Gadsby’s lighting offers a far stronger contribution to mood and tone.

There is a sudden change of pace in Who Killed My Father from the fuzzy memory and inward-looking reflections on family life to thinking about the father’s industrial accident and the politically charged culpability, which is a little rushed here, yet on the whole Wardell’s pacing and Marcus’ careful and ranging performance make this a gripping 60-minutes.

Runs until 2 December 2023