Some characters are too big for the stage. Take John Smythe, the man otherwise known as Daddy in Fiona Mozley’s beguiling novel. By any perspective, not just that of Danny and Cathy, his teenage children, he is a hulk of a figure. He is not only a prize fighter, wiping out opponents in illegal bouts with supernatural ease, but he lives a wild-man existence, prowling society’s edges, off-grid and at one with nature in all its beautiful cruelty.
Faced with giving him theatrical form, writer/director Javaad Alipoor leaves him to our imaginations. Better to suggest his primal power than disappoint us with an all-too-human actor. Instead, Daddy exists in narration and reported speech, never in plain sight. It is a wise move, even if sometimes you hanker for a flesh-and-blood confrontation in a production, for Bradford 2025, that is more descriptive than dramatic.
