Sticks and stones

On Tuesday August 9th, riots broke out in Nottingham. In St Ann’s, gangs attacked cars and threw petrol bombs at the local police station, while shops and businesses in the city centre were looted. So far, almost 100 people have been arrested in connection with the disturbances.

The rarefied atmosphere of Edinburgh in August might seem a world away from inner-city violence but for Joe Doherty, star of Jane Upton’s explosive debut play Bones, the riots in Nottingham are all too real. "I grew up not that far from St Ann’s," says Doherty, an articulate, intelligent 24-year-old who was a youth worker in the city before taking up acting a couple of years ago. "Where I’m from, you only have to walk five minutes and you’ll see everything: crack, alcoholics, gambling addicts."

Nineteen-year-old Mark, Bones' only character, is definitely the kind of lad the Daily Mail might label a "feral youth". Angry, violent, lost in the world, Mark has no friends, no manners and even fewer prospects. At home, his drug-addicted mother struggles to care for her young baby.

Bones is raw, gritty, yet surprisingly compassionate theatre. And unlike the vast majority of myriad editorials on the recent riots in England, the play understands the difference between excusing violence and explaining the rage-fuelled youth culture and dysfunctional family dynamics that spawn it.

"Nineteen years of growing up in that kind of situation is going to make anyone like that," opines Doherty, who speaks with a broad East Midlands accent and, with his shaved beard and scalp for the performance, could pass on the street for what Scots describe as a Ned. "If you bring anyone up in squalor, you can’t expect them to behave like a prince. It’s as simple as that."

Mark is certainly no prince: he steals, scrounges, even beats up prostitutes. But he is also a vivid, three-dimensional person, neither a cipher for "the youth of today" nor a naïve victim. In 45 intense, fevered and occasionally blackly hilarious minutes, Bones takes the audience into Mark’s world, on a journey through the seminal experiences that turned him into the almost unremittingly ugly piece of work we see before us. 

"I’m amazed by how black and white people can be, how they can just pass snap judgements on someone else as good or bad. I didn’t want to be like that with this play," playwright Jane Upton says, on the phone from her home in Long Eaton outside Nottingham. "You can try and pass off something like the riots as just copycat behaviour but that’s just burying your head from so many of the issues that make up the problem."

Upton certainly couldn’t be accused of denying the complexity of life. Told in monologue, through a series of reminiscences from Mark’s rose-tinted view of his own past (all Panda Pops and Brian Clough) as well as his grim present, Bones draws you in with its brutal realism from the opening words and refuses to let go until the bitter end.

The echoes of Shane Meadows’ oeuvre, most obviously This Is England, are undeniable but Upton, who still works as a copywriter at the University of Nottingham, has a distinctive voice all of her own. Written a week before her 30^th birthday, inspiration for Bones wasn’t difficult to find. "A lot of it comes from my own school days. I’m not saying my life was anything like Mark’s but I do remember things – like one of the girls at my school was a prostitute, another was homeless and living in Nottingham city centre. It’s based on those sorts of stories."

Like Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird, Upton’s aim is to put her audience in another person’s shoes. "I want people to come away from the show with a bit more compassion for people and the situations they might be in. My father was a teacher and he taught some kids from really difficult backgrounds but I saw how, just by giving them encouragement and attention, he was able to change their lives. I want people to say 'OK, I’m going to try and understand a bit'."

Although Bones feels very contemporary—indeed, in light of recent events, frighteningly prescient—the drama is actually set in 1998, and many of the memories from Mark’s childhood (Nottingham Forest in the top flight, Skegness) are drawn from the late '80s. "I set the play in 1998 very consciously, because I didn’t want it to be interpreted as a statement about political parties. I didn’t want it to be like 'the Tories are back in so this is what happens'," Upton explains.

Bones might not have been written as a rejoinder to the Conservative-led Coalition, but the play’s cast and production company, Fifth Word Theatre, are already feeling the impact of the current government’s austerity program. The company, which found success in Edinburgh with 2007's Painkillers, are unsure of future funding for their community work in Derby and Nottingham, while last year Joe Doherty lost his job as a youth worker following a round of swingeing budget cuts.

Now delivering pizzas part-time, the aspiring actor understands all too well young people’s frustrations. "The kids used to be able to go to the youth centre but now that’s gone. What are they supposed to do? Every day, all they hear is bad news: there’s no jobs, you’ll never get a house, the economy is ruined."

Doherty, however, is at pains to stress the differences between his own background and that of Mark. Although both live with their mother, the similarities end there: "My mum is one of those crazy mums, she keeps yapping to everyone about me, about how well I’m doing." Indeed, Mrs Doherty is due in Edinburgh this week, bringing with her some urgent supplies – new jeans for her son. "She’ll go to Primark before she comes up," Doherty beams, looking for a moment like a smiling vision of what Mark could have been with similar attention, encouragement and, of course, love.

And what would Mark be up to now? Would he be rioting in St Ann’s last week? Upton, who is considering addressing this very question in an expanded two-act version of the play, has her doubts. "I don’t think he would be on the streets. I imagine him with a girlfriend in a house that she owns, with a dog living in a cupboard in the kitchen. But I can’t imagine he’s very happy."