A BOY BETRAYED
Connor was 18 when he drowned in the bath with an epileptic seizure. It needn’t have happened. He was under slipshod care, away from the family who loved him, in an NHS “Assessment and Treatment Unit” where he was neither competently assessed nor treated with care. There have been scandals about such units for people with autism and learning disabilities, but this case was made famous by the protests and the persistence of his mother , Sara Ryan. She used social media: blogged, publicly accused and reviled the institution , grew a broad wide protest movement and fuelled a damning inquiry into the Slade centre (now closed). She finally got an Article 2 Inquest with jury, which despite the efforts of Southern Health and their lawyers returned unanimous verdicts: serious failings, poor systems, care , risk management, staff inadequately trained , failures of communication.
Her book, “Justice for Laughing Boy” detailed Connor’s life, quirks and problems, leading to his placing in Slade for the final 107 days of his life. The director Stephen Unwin is himself parent of a son with learning disabilities, and already a passionate campaigner (his chilling history play about Nazi attitudes was powerful here in2017 (https://theatrecat.com/2017/05/09/all-our-children-jermyn-st-theatre/). He followed her case, and made this adaptation .
So it’s a campaigning play about a campaign: with Janie Dee as Sara giving a remarkable performance at its centre. At every stage and level she shines with hard truth. In the playful opening of family life his quirks, difficulties, delights and obsession with buses are absorbed with humour by the mother, longtime partner Richard and four siblings. Alfie Friedman (himself autistic) expresses the endearing strangeness of Connor’s perception and the erratic behaviour his family came to understand and love. Friedman’s closeness with Dee is touchingly expressed, and after his death she has ‘conversations’ with him – the boy is always there, on stage as a presence, until the very end. Dee herself handles every nuance of Sara in her struggle for justice and recognition of how it happened : she moves between humour, shock, grief, indignation and ferocious mother-tiger persistence. And in the moment when at 18 suddenly Connor, six feet tall and powerful, has bursts of dangerous aggression and assaults even her, the sense of a family living with both love and fearful uncertainty is properly unnerving.
Alongside Dee, and Forbes Masson as Richard, the four surviving siblings help to tell the story; speaking as themselves or quoting the doctors, support workers, nurses, officials and finally lawyers on both sides at the inquest, plus a not very helpful health minister Jeremy Hunt. Good projections support the mood and story. The result, at 100 minutes straight, is always gripping and certainly informative: it expresses both the rewards and the difficulties that occur when an endearing child becomes a strong adult. The transition into NHS adult care of an individual still deeply childlike is something families rightly dread. We witness how commonsense can clash with a careful legal culture of adult rights . Connor, for instance, hated his epilepsy and therefore denied he had it: this meant the Unit, opting to believe him rather than his mother, did not properly supervise this young adult’s bathing. They later denied the epilepsy existed: horrid post-mortems had to prove it. The lad was also technically free to leave, not confined, which created a legal difference, but as Sara pointed out he wouldn’t have left the unit alone: she knew him, he did not go around alone. Issues also surrounded her relationship, increasingly hostile online an in person, with NHS and unit personnel. Certainly she deserves a plinth in the glorious pantheon of Difficult Women: she had to .
So you watch, learn, and reflect. But one thing which could have been avoided is that in the white heat of author’s and director’s fury, each of the unhelpful or obstructive official voices – played by the sibling group – conveys an exaggeratedly satirical tone: studiedly nasty, scornful voices. But the facts and words themselves are damning enough, and this cartoonish overload jars, gets in the way, even at times making you briefly want to hear the other side. Sara Ryan was right to want answers, exposed a lot of real neglect and institutional failure, and played with brilliant truthfulness by Janie Dee as she goes through grief, shock, outrage, weariness and dry appalled academic distaste for their excuses. Forbes Masson’s Richard has an angry decency. But at times the relentless tone of scorn makes you want a wider frame for the story: not least an illustration that how such disabilities can and sometimes are better helped . And that unease is a shame. Because, in every detail, Connor’s treatment was a downright disgrace.
jermynstreetheatre.co.uk to 31 May
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