Nick Lane is a hugely likeable person.
Normally, that has little bearing on a piece of theatre, but here it's key.
Lane is the writer and director of Me and Me Dad, a follow-up to My Favourite Summer, and, like that play, this is a deeply personal piece of work.
Dave, played by Matt
hew Booth, is the hero of the piece – and for Dave read Nick Lane.
In My Favourite Summer, premiered by Hull Truck in 2007, we met Dave, a young drama school graduate, looking for his place in the world.
Me and Me Dad moves
on a few years. Dave has hit 27, is carving out his professional place in the world and looks like he may be about to grow up. Then his mother dies.
Dave moves back in with his father, ostensibly to help him learn how to cook and fend for himself – Dad never had to learn while Mum was around because she did everything.
We watch as Dad learns how to turn on the grill, peel potatoes and even slice onions.
Really what we are watching is a story of two men coping with grief, witnessing the hole left when someone departs, and an examination of how our relationships with our parents changes as we and they do.
Because Lane is likeable, so is Dave. The character is brought to life by the always reliable Booth, who has a charming presence on stage and makes his audience feel at ease.
The script is based entirely on Lane's life, and he does an admirable job of keeping enough distance from the production to stop it from becoming mawkish, or seeming like a dramatisation of someone's diary, providing plenty of entertainment
and comedy.
In the first act, there is not quite enough plot driving the story and, in the second act, Lane's insertion of a love triangle between Dave's girlfriend and his father seems strange and inauthentic.
What does drive the story is the emotional journey, and that is told impressively. The moment when Dave's grief finally hits him is a beautiful and tenderly written and acted piece of theatre which is well worth the ticket price on its own.
Hull Truck Theatre to Feb 20.
