Village Idiot. Theatre Royal Stratford East.

Cher’s late ‘80s anthem If I Could Turn Back Time has a couple of outings in Samson Hawkins’ debut play Village Idiot, currently at the Theatre Royal Stratford East. It is in the background as the comedy commences and gets a full-on drag rendering mid-way through from the show’s antagonist, HS2 engineer Peter. The song is an apposite choice. Many of the characters here are preoccupied with turning back time. There is blunt, dementing Barbara, matriarch of the Honeybone clan, who wants to go back to a time when nurses could be labelled “oriental” and HS2 bulldozers were not threatening to demolish her village home. She would also prefer if racial slurs like “pikey” were still acceptable banter, and if grandson Peter would call himself gay and not the new-fangled term Queer. After all, she opines with characteristic indelicacy, “bumming hasn’t changed very much”.

Barbara’s near neighbour and arch enemy Kevin Mahoney (Mark Benton) also wants to turn back time. Despite getting a hefty cheque from HS2 for his ex-council house he cannot afford to buy again locally. Incoming townies have driven up the prices too much for that. Faced with an unwanted exile in Thailand with disabled daughter Debbie (a feisty Faye Wiggan) and without dopey mixed-race son Liam (Joseph Langdon on great form), he rails against the newcomers’ vegan cakes and alien attitudes. Kevin, like Barbara, is a walking, talking cluster bomb of F and C-words ready to explode at the merest sniff of the incomers’ camomile tea. The local pub has closed, the vicar has to split his time between three villages, and this year sees the last ever incarnation of the village talent competition. But hey, there is an upside. At least Kevin’s new online girlfriend in Thailand, who may or may not be a ladyboy, has “massive tits”.

As with the Cooper siblings’ hit BBC TV comedy about rural decay, This Country, Hawkins asks us to empathise with characters whose mindset feels eccentrically out-of-date, verging on reactionary. But there is an important question here. Which of us, confronted with the challenge of adapting to wrenching changes we are powerless to influence, would not cling on to ways of thinking that seem to have been proven over generations? Hawkins makes our task here tougher because Barbara (a sparky Eileen Nicholas) is such a spectacularly odious character. “What has progress ever done for me?” she demands. It got your grandson Peter (Philip Labey) a first class university education, a great job in HS2, and the freedom to pursue a hobby as a Cher impersonator, one is tempted to answer.

If you are not hardened to fruity language, you should probably avoid this show. The production blurb has a 200-word trigger warning, and it is easy to see why the production team is nervous. In fact, while the first (of many, many, many) iterations of “soppy cock-sucking cunt” comes as a mild surprise, very little of what follows is overtly offensive. You are quite likely to hear worse from a bunch of attention-seeking teens on the bus to the theatre. If anything, the language veers towards the patronising, suggesting as it does that the stereotypical mode of communication of country-folk is a kind of earthy, uneducated, expletive strewn snarl of rebellion. It is akin to suggesting the entirety of the diverse Black British community speak in roadman slang.

Hawkins is on safer ground with his other core theme of inclusivity, also the priority of director Nadia Fall’s deaf and disabled-led production team, Ramps on the Moon. There is genuine pathos in the show’s best scenes which explore the burgeoning relationship between Debbie, who has Downs syndrome, and Peter’s neurodivergent brother Harry (a hugely charismatic Maximilian Fairley). Their evolving demands for both support and the freedom to live their own lives are genuinely thought-provoking. Well-conceived and deftly penned too are the encounters between successful Peter and labourer Liam, who soon find out they have more in common than they might otherwise have supposed.

Village Idiot is too long, partly because it frequently interrupts the narrative flow with scenes drawn from the village talent competition. We see Liam deliver a rap; quite what he is trying to communicate with the line “stop being a wussy and kill that pussy” remains mercifully unexplained. There is a frankly tedious magician vignette to endure, one which seems primarily designed to provide a punchline for a lame Brexit joke. Odious Barbara even gets a cabaret style solo, accompanied by a cast a cast of top-hatted village crooners.

There is much to like in Village Idiot. The writing is fresh and often hilarious, even if occasionally a tad preachy. Hawkins makes clear early on whose side he is on. You may not agree with him, but it is hard to fault his commitment.

Writer: Samson Hawkins

Director: Nadia Fall