Tim Price's 70-minute Protest Song is a passionate monologue which articulates the worldview of a London rough sleeper. In Polly Findlay's spare production it's given blazing life by Rhys Ifans.
Ifans plays Danny, who shambles on to the stage with a dirty sleeping bag draped around his shoulders. He asks for money — the first of a string of direct engagements with the audience.
Gradually snippets of his life story are revealed. On the streets for seven years, he is a former metal-presser, a one-time full-back, an alcoholic, a chef (of sorts) and a father. He’s also divorced, apparently on account of his selfishness.
Danny takes refuge in banter and anecdotes. He’s forever mislaying his phone, which seems to be a crutch. Inconveniently, his idea of keeping it safe is to store it inside a bag inside a bag inside a bag. Everything in his world is under wraps yet ready to explode.
He explains how before the Occupy movement started the Square Mile struck him as blissfully quiet. But then in October 2011 an army of dissenters arrived and turned it into a sea of tents and bongos. Danny recounts the way his involvement with the Occupy group intensified, giving shape to his days — and also, dangerously, giving him hope.
At one point he recalls being kettled for eight hours on Blackfriars Bridge, which prompts him to observe that after so many years of being asked to move along it’s ironic now to be told to remain motionless in one place.
Price revels in ironies of this kind — his writing is abrasive, messy and shrewd. And Ifans is immense: you can imagine what his King Lear would be like — raw, belligerent, wounded yet resilient.
Until January 11 (020 7452 3000, nationaltheatre.org.uk)
