August in England review: Lenny Henry’s Windrush play is punchy and poignant

Lenny Henry could have picked a less complex subject for his first play than the Windrush generation. To turn it into a comedy monologue seems like a different feat altogether. Yet, somehow, he pulls it off. August in England puts a name to the political scandal – the name of August Henderson, a fictional British-Jamaican man. Having arrived in England (or “H’Inglan’”, as he pronounces it) using his mother’s passport, August tells us the tale of his life. The stand-up comedian and Comic Relief co-founder imbues the character with his own quick wit and impeccable comic timing. At times, the script struggles to smoothly link the laughs with the trauma of the situation, but Henry’s performance is a thing to behold.

From the moment he swaggers onto the stage, handing out shots of unspecified alcohol to the front row, he asserts August as a loveable rogue – a ladies’ man getting himself into (and swiftly out of) scrapes. This is Shakespeare’s Seven Ages of Man told through a 90-minute stand-up set: the show tumbles through August’s life in West Bromwich, his accent flipping from Jamaica to Midlands with consistent inconsistency. You root for August so deeply that, when Lynette Linton and Daniel Bailey’s production takes a turn – letters from the Home Office falling from the ceiling and tumbling out of cabinets – your stomach drops too.

Henry isn’t a Windrush baby himself – although his older siblings could have been – but August is undeniably a version of himself. The Seventies time capsule of his living room, complete with crushed red carpet and orange wallpaper, is the setting from which Henry riffs with the audience and squeezes every last line of comic potential. The performance is unrelenting, with song and dance peppered throughout. Henry cha-cha-chas, gyrates against a pillar and even gives a particularly creepy recreation of Theresa May’s robot moves. “Now that’s a hostile environment!” he quips, to roars of laughter.

The jokes are so tight they leave you reeling, with the one-liners forming the fabric of August in England. The king of similes, August describes toddlers running around his shop, “teefin’ frozen fish out the freezer an’ lickin’ ‘em like a choc ice”, and explains that he won’t marry because his parents’ was “as miserable as Nigel Farage at Notting Hill Carnival”. He delivers the lines with total nonchalance, the audience laughing on a delay as they only realise their genius seconds later. That, after all, is Henry’s skill. He makes it all look so easy.

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What lets August in England down is the material linking the jokes. Great gags are reconnected to the story by clunky “so, anyway”s, pulling us out of the laughter and back into the plot. Serious subject matter is no bother for Henry, but you can hear the difference in the writing between the more improvisational comedy moments and the denser monologues. Occasionally, he struggles to capture the right tone for each section.

While ricocheting from comedy to tragedy and back again can give the audience whiplash – the saddest moments interspersed with big laughs and vice versa – it doesn’t downplay the emotional heft of Henry’s performance. He talks about love and grief with a lyricism and pain, shedding tears in the show’s final moments. While the final 10 minutes feel like a dramatic gear shift (marked by a huge flash of light and cacophony of noise), what follows is punchy, powerful and poignant. August in England may begin with Henry at his showman best, but to simply write him off as a funny man is a mistake.

Bush Theatre, until 10 June