Is Mark Thomas the bravest performer in comedy? He’s certainly had his moments, including walking the wall dividing the West Bank between Israel and the various bits of Palestine; taking on the commercial arms trade and Coca Cola, not to mention holding the Guinness Book of Records title for numbers of political protests.
In Bravo Figaro, however, he takes on an even greater challenge; his own father, and by extension (or ought that to be connection?), himself. Growing up in the shadow of one’s own parents can be an intimidating experience. In Mark Thomas’ case, it seems it was also a particularly bruising one.
The contradictions, in all senses, between a working class upbringing and a bourgeois present life-style have become a cliché past its sell-by date in many minds, but Thomas reminds us of the way many of us were fifty odd years ago, and how the most seemingly trivial things help shape us in ways few anticipate.
A self-employed builder, Thomas pere developed a love of opera through one of the many part-works available at the time, in this case on ‘The Great Musicians’. Each issue was supplied with a vinyl disc relating to the particular composer discussed, and as he worked his way through these, his enthusiasm grew.
So far, so autodidactic. However, a darker side of the man emerges as Thomas reminisces, of a man with a violent streak that, in spite of his status as a Methodist Lay Preacher, he was not afraid to vent on his own family in a most un-Christian fashion.
Thomas uses interviews recorded with his father, mother and siblings to illustrate the nature of their relationships, and also to describe in sound one particular occasion. With his father now dying of a particularly devastating progressive illness, that affects his memory and responses, Thomas organised a very special event for him, in which a number of Royal Opera singers visited his parent’s home and sang arias and choruses which he recognised and appreciated. A last glimpse of the world he had once so much enjoyed.
The understated way in Thomas deals with his subject matter makes it the more moving, and his seeming throw-aways about his own reunion with the world of opera and his present inability to enjoy it are almost more moving than the centrepiece of this production.
As a comment on the great unsaids of all our lives, of the contradictory and sometimes hypocritical nature of our familial relationships, and the ways in which art shapes all our lives, whether we are aware of this or not, Bravo Figaro is quite remarkable.
Well, is Mark Thomas the bravest performer in comedy? Get a ticket for this show and make up your own minds.
Times: various - see Fringe programme for details
Tickets: £18 (£13, £6 U) August 5, 7, 8, 9, 12, 14, 15, 16, 19, 21, 23, 26
£20 (£15) August 10, 11, 17, 18, 24, 25