Family politics “I
’m late for a meeting so I might be a bit brief with you,” Mark Thomas warns me at the start of our chat. With books, radio appearances, political campaigns and a family to look after on top of it all, you can hardly blame the agitprop comic for having a full schedule. Indeed, he sounds a little worn down. But such is the price you pay for hard work – something that Thomas has never been afraid of. As he approaches his half century (in April), the dad of two appears to be in a reflective mood as he chats about Bravo Figaro!, the acclaimed show that he brings back to London at the end of this month after a successful national tour. “The show is about my dad and the relationship we had,” he tells Scout, “and an unlikely love of opera.” It was initially commissioned by the Royal Opera House, then played to rave reviews at the Edinburgh Fringe, which Thomas followed with a late summer run at the always politically-astute Tricycle in Kilburn. “It’s about how he became ill with a debilitating illness called Progressive Supranuclear Palsy.” He pauses. The silence is full of tension. “It’s a form of dementia. Your dad is what you’re losing.” As his dad began to suffer more and more with the disease, Thomas began to listen to opera as a way to reach out to his father – to share something his dad, a builder, always loved. To become close to him, really.
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“I’ve recorded interviews for the show with my dad, my mum, my brother,” he explains. “The audio interviews are interwoven into the show.” Bravo Figaro! is less overtly political than what traditional Thomas fans will be used to. “But I’ve looked at it the same way I’d look at any issue,” he says, “whether it’s the Israeli barrier or the right to protest.” I ask Thomas whether his dad was an influence, an inspiration? “I don’t know about that! I mean, the relationship you
have with your parents can be very problematic.” Did his father’s politics play a part in his own interest in the subject, which has come to define his more-than three decades of work? “Our politics were very different!” Thomas says. His own conversion to the cause came elsewhere: “In fact, it was religion that got me interested in politics. I discovered that things weren’t always what they were said to be.” It’s that interest in hidden truths that has marked out Thomas as an investigative comic on a mission. His TV shows, books and stand-up sets have shone a torch onto subjects rarely considered worthy of news coverage – let alone as viable topics for comedy club material: Turkey’s contentious Illisu Dam, the arms trade and the British government’s woeful part in promoting it, the way the rich can slither their way out of paying taxes through kinks in the system (ok, that one’s had fairly good coverage). Thomas – who has listed George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia as his favourite book – has ploughed a fascinating furrow in the face of the supposed collapse of Britain’s left wing. And, as it turns out, many of those generational political changes played out for Thomas in his family’s front room. “My nan, who I adored, came from the pit villages of Newcastle and was from a tradition of collective politics,” he reveals. “My dad was more interested in the family and less the collective. His view was, ‘Bollocks to everybody else!’” Mark Thomas, February 28, Arts Depo, markthomasinfo.co.uk
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At the end of a national tour, political comedian Mark Thomas is bringing his unusually personal show back to London for one final date. He chats to Chris Beanland