Familyman

Published Monday 12 May 2008 at 10:35 by Mark Shenton

Rikki Beadle-Blair - actor, director, screenwriter, playwright, singer, designer, choreographer/dancer and songwriter - is obviously a theatrical polymath. He is also an aerobics teacher. And in his latest play, he gives a fierce, funny and frequently provocative workout to some simmering ideas about parenthood, as he puts three generations of a family under the spotlight, just as a fourth generation is already on the way.

These are families that are begun young - Caesar and his partner Deanna are about to become grandparents - at the age of 34. Their 17-year-old son Nelson has also now made a classmate pregnant, but unbeknownst to his still-unmarried parents, he has actually tied the knot already with his partner Keisha. But dad isn’t happy, he doesn’t want his son repeating this particular piece of family history, even if the example he himself provides is far better than his own father’s, who left when was he a baby.

Beadle-Blair’s play about family gains an extra resonance by being written with his actor brother Gary Beadle (best known for playing Paul in EastEnders) in mind to play the patriarch. It becomes a double triumph for them - neither is afraid to appear unsympathetic at times in writing or performance, but both are magnificently true to the conflicted emotions - and bad behaviour - that frequently arise in families.

Beadle-Blair and his director Dawn Reid are also structurally adventurous, brilliantly staging separate conversations between the father and both his sister and son simultaneously, and dipping in and out of flashbacks that cleverly illuminate the present.