MARK THOMAS BRAVO FIGARO at the ORAN MOR

According to Mark this is the most personal show he has ever done.And listening to it the audience is drawn into a performance of great emotion , depth and feelings.Every time he performs this show he hears his Fathers voice , sees his Fathers work , im the form of an ark his father handmade for him over 40 years ago which is still in durable condition, and has a "conversation" with him that he can no longer do so in real life due to his Fathers suffering of an incurable degenerative disease.This is the story of Childrens relationship with their Parents , the story of how we try to reach each other in the most significant time when the passing of the Parents is nigh.They are Humorous and Sad , they are emotional and they are powerful , they forge us and make us who we are and determine the course of our lives.At the end of the day you have to rectify and make amends the best you can.

Mark initially trained as an actor in drama school , and the show is akin to a one man play with precision being required between dialogue and visual and audio cues , but at no time does the show seem contrived , there is always scope for adhoc and improvised observations of the day and the moment , even quality put downs of hecklers.If anything , the props and cues give the story more dimension and the audience feels they are being invited into a very personal universe rather than just being told a story at a distance.

The video below explains just hoe much intricate technical teamwork went into producing what to the viewer seems a casual anecdotal tale.



The show has a very political undercurrent allied to the personal elements , Mark observation that the difference between Working Class and Middle Class is that the former want their Children to be "better" than they were whereas the latter want their Children to receive the "same" as they were beneficiaries to is a more profound observation than meets the surface , it means the former are more keen to the politics of equality for all than the latter who easily "accept" the coin of neo-liberalism and its "cuts" as being the only way forward , hence the stripping of the current so-called middle class from all the hard fought gains of the former being achieved with the minimal of resistance.

The review below from The Telegraph captures quite well the ambiance of the show.

“We’ve got to live with what we’ve got” muses Mark Thomas towards the end of his new solo show, which applies his irrepressible personality, story-telling and stand-up skills to the poignant subject of his 72-year-old dad Colin, a once hugely industrious South London builder, an indomitable family man and an unlikely working-class opera fanatic now fading away with a degenerative condition - progressive supranuclear palsy - in a bungalow in Bournemouth.

In switching away from the political activism of, say, his recent West Bank barrier walk to matters close to home and heart, Thomas hasn’t forsaken his talent for sardonic amusement. Relaying a potted history of their relationship, he shares the funny side of his childhood which, although it had dark days of anger and abuse, presented such priceless vignettes as Thomas senior sitting watching Steptoe and Son in his long-johns, trousers round his ankles, in order not to get his favourite chair dirty after a day’s hard toil.

The set is simple, sparse, bearing a few salient objects - packing boxes, a hand-built wooden toy arc, a small stool, a hand-trolley bearing his dad’s old music magazines - and dominated by a vast photo of the bearded patriarch in his pomp, surrounded by rose-patterned wall-paper. Just as the comedian engineered the coup of bringing Royal Opera House singers into his dad’s home to sing, among other things, the Figaro aria he loved, so Thomas flings open the doors and lets us peer inside his world.

At times, as he skips around the stage, he looks like a gleeful kid again - at others, a little boy lost. When you hear the frail voice, recorded that memorable day, which now issues from a man once as mighty-looking as Pavarotti, it’s hard to know where to look - and not to weep. Bravo indeed.

This interview gives more detail about the Show and what it means to Thomas , and the background story of how the idea came about.