August in England
Bush Theatre, London

IF anyone can command a stage as effortlessly as Lenny Henry, I’d like to know who. 

Charm, versatility, mercurial transformation, comic brilliance and open-hearted audience rapport mark out this consummate actor as one of the safest bets for a one-man show you could possibly imagine. 

In this, his debut play, Henry holds an adoring audience in the palm of his hand for 90 minutes and the Bush Theatre buzzes with life.

But there is more. 

While the first half may feel like extended stand-up, with laughs coming thick and fast, the mood gentle and benign, and the comedy pure escapism, the underlying drama rests on a purposeful, authentic narrative. 

Henry presents as one August Henderson who, at the age of 8, arrives in England from Jamaica with his mother. In this role, he enacts for us the story of a boy’s journey into manhood, embracing culture shock and structural hostility minute by minute, as if it were the stuff of life. 

But this is no tale of woe, for Henry’s mastery of stagecraft and affection for others transforms what could be misery into something uplifting and even joyous. Thus, even as the shocks kick in, we continue, at first, to laugh.   

Enoch Powell and his “rivers of blood” speech, for instance, are referenced only in passing. Theresa May’s call for the nation to create a “hostile environment” for — effectively — all those not born here is turned on its head when Henry mimics her dancing and says: “If that’s not a hostile environment, I don’t know what is!” We collapse with laughter.

But then the axe falls …

August, he tells us, came to England on his mother’s passport in 1962. We watch him, as a Jamaican by birth, painstakingly carve out a life in which love and hope are victors. We see his devotion to his children. We hear his accent veer from Jamaican to Black Country, and then to any old thing that works. We see him cry for those he has lost. We see him build a dodgy but workable business with an Indian mate. We see him stay on the right side of the law … just. And when he is about to remarry at 60, we see the first letter from Capita drop on his mat.

August, the letter claims, is not a British national. He is — later letters confirm — an illegal immigrant who must “return” to his homeland. 

This is the man whose life in England we have loved and shared. This is the boy who came to England when anyone in the empire could come here as of right.

For the audience, the injustice is palpable, the iniquity beyond words. And then there’s the shame: shame that rises like a mushroom cloud to pollute the space; shame that we can allow such inhuman, governmental acts to be performed in our name.   

Directors Daniel Bailey and Lynette Linton must be thanked for this brave and unequivocal call to arms. But it is Henry who seals it in our hearts.   

Runs until June 10. Box office: 020 8743 5050, bushtheatre.co.uk