A little preachy at times, E.V. Crowe's new play is smart and broad in its questioning of progress and progressives.
Hero by E.V Crowe is a weird play to review. As the story unfolds, I care less and less about the characters and at several points I feel like the playwright is diluting her point. But by the end, Crowe has said what she needs to with strength and clarity from cleverly constructed characters equipped with her brawny dialogue.
She gives us excited, heated and frustrated arguments between primary school teacher Danny and his husband Joe while their straight friend Jamie finds himself the victim of bullying/gay bashing (you decide). With ideas about honesty, reality and the noises we make about protecting the children, she makes us question whether tolerance only makes room for anything out of the 'ordinary' like water makes way for oil. Examining the thin membrane between them she swirls it until we can imagine a space where the two dare to mix.
The main issue, the one applicable even beyond the sexuality issue framed here, is the idea of who controls the dominant narrative we are subject to. From the acceptable narratives in the classroom to the ones between friends around dinner tables, Crowe exposes where the power and deception lies when it comes to our commonly accepted view of progress.
Danny and Joe's arguments, for example, centre on Danny's decision to tell his classroom of minors that he's gay which would, Joe thinks, skew their chances at adoption and maybe expose kids to more than they need to know. Language comes into play as Danny's focus is inclusivity not homosexuality. He wants to present “alternative” ways of living without the alternative tag but his pragmatic husband would rather play by the book. “The square root of male homosexual primary school teacher times one is paedophile” he has to point out to bring Danny's optimism into focus in the current discourse on the matter.
His decision to challenge the lazy version of honesty that exists at his school is spurred by Jamie (fantastic Daniel Mays), another school teacher who, when called gay by a pupil, allows the situation to build inside him. Meanwhile, Jamie's immediate outside world gets increasingly violent and confused. As the classic straight, white male, Crowe gives Jamie a steadily increasing victim mentality as he loses more and more control over his assumed position of power. She also makes us consider his plight seriously although without much sympathy. The way these characters unfold is brilliantly clever and thanks to fantastic acting and direction from Jeremy Herrin, quite engrossing.
But there are a few claggy bits. Like a hammer threatening to destroy this play, comes swinging ideas about fate, cosmic powers and most worrying of all, angering the gods. If it's a look at religion, it's a very orthodox one and if it's a look at power, it's a fickle one. There's an unwieldy but important opening, references to Julie London's Cry Me A River and mentions of storms, drowning and bad luck at sea which all feel crammed in and lost amongst the rest of this otherwise strong and salient new play. 
Hero runs at Royal Court Theatre until 22nd December.
Image by Johan Persson
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