“You forget I knew you were a queer long before I knew you were a fascist.”
Written by Harry Mc Donald, FOAM, premiered at Finborough Theatre in London on 19th March and runs until April 13th.
It’s 1973, a public lavatory. Nicky shaves his head, watched by an older man. Publicly, Nicky is a skinhead. And a Neo-Nazi. But right now, in this place, that doesn’t matter. He’s not the first man Nicky meets in a public toilet, and he won’t be the last…
Spanning twenty years and inspired by a true story, Foam examines the nature of identity and the consequences of right-wing extremist ideology against the backdrop of London’s skinhead and gay scenes of the 1970s and 1980s.
With right-wing extremism again on the rise, Foam confronts the flashpoint where the terrifyingly personal and the violently political collide.
The Artiscape spoke with Harry Mc Donald about his production.
Why did you decide to write this play?
McDonald: I wrote this play because Matthew Iliffe, the director of Foam, introduced me to the shadowy, cult figure of Nicky Crane back in 2021. I went away and did a load of research into the real man, and the more I learned about him, the more compelling and terrifying I found him in equal measure. He held so many different identities and was known as so many things to different people, it seemed to lend itself so clearly to the whiplash that theatre can offer and spoke to so many questions I have as a writer. At a certain point, the play became inevitable.
What were the challenges for you in writing this play?
McDonald: Foam is a play about a neo-Nazi, and I felt quite strongly that I shouldn’t shy away from that and write around Nicky Crane. In other words, he is the centre of this play, and asking an audience to spend time with him in a way that didn’t ever feel like I was asking an audience to like or sympathise with him was a massive challenge.
But it’s also a play about gay men and the way they interact with each other – that was something I felt was well within my abilities – it just so happens that the gay man at the centre of Foam is someone I find politically reprehensible.
What are looking forward about this upcoming production?
McDonald: Whenever actors get their hands on your words it’s always exciting, and I’m lucky to have such a brilliant company of actors – Jake Richards, Matthew Baldwin, Kishore Walker and Keanu Adolphus Johnson – working on this play.
Matthew has also assembled an amazing team of designers, and is so skilled at coordinating all those elements to create a really sophisticated production. Basically, I can’t wait to see something I dreamt up at the kitchen table in three dimensions.
What would like an audience to take away from this production?
McDonald: I hope it challenges their ideas about identity and complicates their understanding of this period of history. We can all-too-easily fall into the feel-good historical narratives even when there are other, more complicated things to look at and to dramatise.
But I’d also like them to see the contemporary resonances, I wasn’t necessarily always thinking about history when I was writing about the complicity of queer people – gay men in particular – with far-right politics.
Foam runs at Finborough Theatre until 19th March. To book tickets visit this website.
