Out of the Margins

Clint Dyer and Roy Williams's series of dramas about racism and friendship between black and white English working classes kicked off in 2020 with the original monologue, and a roof-raising pre-pandemic performance from Rafe Spall. The second debuted in a different time: Death of England: Delroy was a socially distanced production that had to close early due to the second lockdown. Death of England: Face to Face capped the original ‘trilogy’ by bringing the characters from the first two plays – Michael and Delroy – together, played by different actors. 

With Death of England: Closing Time we have a fourth and (it seems) final chapter that adds a female perspective to a series of plays that have in the main concerned themselves with toxic masculinity - "We wanted to end it with the two women. The men have left such a mess and it is left up to the women to try to clear that up". On stage this September and October at the National Theatre in London, Hayley Squires and Jo Martin play Carly and Denise, the wife and mum to the previous plays’ Delroy. It follows the two as they pick up the pieces from the various catastrophes wrought by the men in the earlier shows in a thought-provoking drama that explores family dynamics, race, colonialism and cancel culture. 

This is a rehearsal copy of an earlier draft of the play, including a postcard from Roy, signed by him. Annotated across most pages, with notes both from the rehearsal, and new ones just for this auction, this is a working script, so we see the playwright in the rehearsal room, splitting the scenes into intriguing titles, boxed in thick red pen: "Sharing her pain", "Stamping on egg shells", "Battle for the facts", "Grief", "Operation Delroy". There are a few pages with questions/cuttings that come directly from the rehearsal process, and an intriguing double spread where the playwright writes out the same dialogue on both sides, as if we're watching him work through additions to the text itself, live. 

Look, the script is quite messy, it's a bit chaotic: but it's live, it's theatre, it's the real thing.