A compelling tale of astonishing, real-life negligence

Laughing Boy opens by announcing the eponymous Connor’s untimely death, drowning unnoticed in the bath following an epileptic seizure under the care of NHS Southern Health. Having dropped that bombshell, the show paints a portrait of Connor before his demise, and chronicles his family’s crusade for justice against those who failed to protect him. Simmering with a mother’s righteous indignation, Laughing Boy feels important and real in a way that makes its uneven pacing easy to forgive.

Real-life stories of underdogs fighting against a big corporation’s incompetence and malice feel particularly of the moment, following the runaway success of ITV’s Mr. Bates vs The Post Office. On stage last summer, the National Theatre’s excellent Grenfell simultaneously humanised its victims and galvanised its audience’s outrage. Whilst Laughing Boy never quite reaches the gut-punching shock of these other stories, it is a genuinely scandalous tale of neglect and poor leadership, to which Connor and his mother lend relatable faces.

Playing Connor’s parents, Janie Dee and Forbes Masson burn with a very real parental anger at a fundamentally broken system. Actors playing other members of the family cover various roles as they crop up in the story, remaining on-stage when not involved in the present scene. This creates the effect of Connor’s mother being buffeted from pillar to post and back again, evoking the disorientation and frustration inevitable when simultaneously grieving and fighting the system. Official jargon and dismissive reports are projected onto a minimalist curved backdrop, amplifying the sense of injustice.

Writing about real things happening to real people lends a natural air of authenticity to every line of dialogue and non-linear plot thread. The production feels warm and caring, without ever straying into the sentimental or patronising: you can tell the playwright, Stephen Unwin, has a learning-disabled child himself, and that the script is based on a book by Connor’s mother about her experience.

Unfortunately, real-life doesn’t often lend itself to dramatic tension, and Laughing Boy falls victim to some of this unevenness. Compelling scenes at a coroner’s inquest are punctured by reports of supportive twitter messages, which are nice but fail to move the story forward. Similarly, the narrative doesn’t know when to end, and several scenes feel like the story’s close before the play’s actual conclusion. At times, the script seems to aim at a permanent record of what actually happened, rather than a compelling narrative inspiring its audience to action.

Sara Ryan – Connor’s real-life mother – says the circumstances leading to Connor’s death “should be a national scandal”, and following Laughing Boy’s account it’s hard to see how an audience could disagree. It is this intense sense of realness that is both the show’s biggest asset and its main drawback, but it is ultimately successful in drawing attention to the very real plight of adults with learning difficulties in the UK.

Laughing Boy plays at the Jermyn Street Theatre until 31st May, with Saturday and Tuesday matinees and a number of relaxed performances, before moving to Theatre Royal Bath from 4th-8th June. Tickets can be purchased for Jermyn Street here, and Bath here.