Kneecap: A craicing political movie about Ireland

Saturday evening – and what better than catching up with another film? In this case, writer and director Rich Peppiatt’s 2024 Kneecap, about the real-life rise of Belfast’s Irish-language hip-hop trio of that name and starring them as themselves.

It starts in the late 2010s in Northern Ireland/the north of the island of Ireland, where there’s an ongoing political issue of having the Irish language being accorded the same rights as the Scottish and Welsh languages in their respective parts of the UK.

Post-Good Friday, working-class lads Liam and Naoise are essentially estranged from society and living in a world of drugs and raves. As children, they had learned to speak Irish Gaelic from Naoise’s father Arlo, a Republican who then went on the run to avoid arrest, thereby refusing to accept his own parental responsibility.

Liam has been keeping a diary, in Irish, which amounts to a sort of poetry. When he’s arrested by the NI police, having been at a rave, and refuses to answer any questions in English, Irish speaker and music teacher JJ O Dochartaighn is called to translate.

Ó Dochartaighn realises that Liam has real talent and, as a musician himself, invites the lads to his own improvised studio in a garage, where they record a track.

However, even as the trio gains in popularity, it faces real threats from Republican factions, the Northern Irish police and assorted others.

Perhaps surprisingly, the central trio – Naoise Ó Cairealláin, Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh and JJ Ó Dochartaigh, as themselves, are really excellent, with nice turns from Simone Kirby as Naoise's mother, Dolores, Michael Fassbender as Arlo and Josie Walker as a detective.

Shot in an anarchic fashion, with no shortage of swearing, lots of drug use, plus nudity and sex, it's very good and very funny indeed. Not really my kind of music, but very enjoyable.

A superb history of trans and non-binary lives

Before We Were Trans by Kit Heyam is a remarkable achievement. First published last year and now out in paperback, it is an attempt to map out a history of trans and non-binary people – not just within the white West, but taking in cultures around the world.

Heyam works scrupulously to avoid imposing contemporary, white Western values and ideas about gender onto people from different cultures and living in very different societies (and times), reminding readers that to do so is dangerous in terms of a meaningful understanding of history, but that it also risks colonising – or re-colonising – those lives.

 

It is full of revelatory information. For instance, I had no idea that in Swahili, “all pronouns are gender neutral”. Or that “The Daughters of Bilitis, an American lesbian activist group founded in 1955, described butch lesbians as ‘the worst publicity we can get’.”

 

Records from WWI internment camps on the Isle of Man provide a wealth of information from the German civilians imprisoned there for years with no ‘biological females’.

 

The author explains in detail how, in some cultures, from First Nation to South Asian ones, gender non-conformity is often intrinsically linked to spirituality. No matter how difficult some in the West might find it to understand this, we should not pretend it is not the reality for people who experience gender in such a way.

 

Heyam is also determined that we should not simply assume that in every – and there are plenty – historic example of gender non-conformity, we should assume that the person involved was trans or non-binary.

 

They point out that there could have been motives for being gender non-confirmative that could have involved coercion, the need to make a living and more. But as they point out, it’s also a major likelihood that at least *some* were what we would now describe as trans or non-binary.  

 

Initially, I found it a bit annoying to be reminded of these things quite frequently, but I came to understand the value of such reminders. I read history books on a reasonably regular basis, but have never read one like this, and ultimately it benefits from it. It has helped me think quite seriously about number of things I have not thought through before.

 

But Heyem also hits the proverbial nail right on the head in an understanding of why Western, non-binary people might be easily tempted to appropriate the experiences of non-Western, non-gender conforming people, given the assaults on trans and non-binary people currently being experienced – not least in the US and UK.

 

We need to construct a more nuanced dialogue in order not to appropriate, while still celebrating the range of non-gender conforming lives and understanding that in terms of our own relationship to the wider LGBT+ community.   

 

Heyam Is to be applauded for taking a complex subject and approaching it in such a way as to make it informative, challenging and, as they suggest at the end, ‘kind’, to those in the past as well as those living now and, indeed, those in the future.

 

A very different and valuable history – and one to be heartily recommended.

Camping it up with a fascinating new history

Paul Baker’s latest foray into LGBT+ history, following histories of Polari and Section 28, takes a look at Camp! The story of the attitude that conquered the world – and it is both an extremely educative and entertaining read.

As with those two previous books, Baker’s approach is well-researched historically, but also includes autobiographical elements and observations, with a nice side of cheek. Also as previously, this recipe works very well.

 

The first chapter examines the origins of camp as we know it – in particular, its relationship to Louis IX in France.

 

I also had no idea about the origins of the cakewalk and the black balls, and therefore, voguing. Baker covers both these in good fashion. 

 

I’ve seen the Jimmy Cagney film Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942 a number of times, but I hadn’t a clue that the lyrics of the eponymous song were originally written in 1755 as a British pop at ragged Americans, who then turned it around.

 

Take these lyrics:

 

“Yankee Doodle went to London,

Riding on a pony,

Stuck a feather in his cap,

And called it macaroni.”

 

Had I ever considered what the pasta reference was actually about? No. But in fact, it was a nickname – and a pejorative one – for young British men who did the Grand Tour and returned with the fashion affectations of, in particular, Italy. Maybe not ‘gay’, but certainly you can see the link to ‘camp’ – and to gay. Fascinating.

 

Taking a leaf out of Baker’s own book, so to speak, there was masses here (particularly in the earlier chapters) that I recognised as tastes from my own earlier years. Agnes Moorehead in Bewitched gets a mention – my absolute favourite character in a show I adored as a child!

 

Paul Lynde was also in Bewitched, but for me, was most memorable and most deliciously enjoyable for his voiceover work on The Perils of Penelope Pitstop (camp in every way imaginable).

 

There are explorations of upper-class British (English) camp – the Mitfords in particular, plus the reach of non-aristo Noël Coward – together with a fascinating introduction to the black cakewalks and balls where voguing was created.

 

But while camp is easy to take as an unserious attitude, Baker illustrates that it is often a way of defiance. And how much more defiant than those at the Stonewall Riots who faced down the police down with a chorus line, singing a revised version of Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay, which, while details are not set in concrete, certainly involved black drag queens.

 

There’s a personal educational tip on that note – it also made me realise also why a version of Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay is used, in the way it is, in the film, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

 

Of course there are things that are missing here – as Baker acknowledges early on: everyone will have different camp (and campy – ie *knowingly* being camp) faves, but this a really good look at a cultural phenomenon. 

 

Paul Baker’s Camp! Is out now, published by Footnote Press

There are still tickets for an event with the author next week in central London – Bloomsbury, Queerness and Camp. Perfect for Pride Month.

 

 

 

Outrageous! Section 28 as a warning from history

Outrageous! The story of Section 28 and Britain’s battle for LGBT education by Paul Baker manages to be both a detailed history of the notorious, homophobic legislation and a memoir that is often very funny, recounting how the author grew up under what, before being passed into law, was Clause 28.

It was a badly drafted clause in the Local Government Act in 1988, banning local authorities – which have responsibility for local state schools – from ‘promoting’ homosexuality and the “acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship”.

That ‘promoting’ bit was a major difficulty – did acknowledging homosexuality exists equate with ‘promotion’? If you played pupils a bit of Tchaikovsky, would that amount to ‘promotion’?

In the House of Commons, Labour MP Tony Benn put it like this: “... if the sense of the word “promote” can be read across from “describe”, every murder play promotes murder, every war play promotes war, every drama involving the eternal triangle promotes adultery; and Mr Richard Branson’s condom campaign promotes fornication. The House had better be very careful before it gives to judges, who come from a narrow section of society, the power to interpret ‘promote’.”

Then of course, there was the whole idea that an LGBT relationship was a ‘pretend’ one. Baker points out that the pace of social change since the 1960s – decriminalisation of homosexuality (albeit with strictures in place) only came in 1967 – had left many older people struggling in such a rapidly shifting landscape and in what many saw as ‘the permissive society’.

The process of how something comes to be on the statue book is explained in a good bit of civics showing how the Westminster Parliament works in terms of both houses.

Baker uses interviews with key figures, including Sir Ian McKellen, Angela Mason and Lord Chris Smith, to recount what happened, together with many quotes from speakers in both the House of Commons and the Lords when the subject was being debated.

Many of those quotes still have the power to shock now, with their brazen and even violent hatred. The usual names come up – Mary Whitehouse, Lord Longford, Malcolm Muggeridge … together with ones that will be less well known to the wider audience, such as Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman, who was Baker’s MP when he went to work at Lancaster University, and mine too when I lived in that area.

She was a sort of handbagging Margaret Thatcher clone on ’roids – a deeply unpleasant woman that I personally had contact with when writing to her in the 1980s about Campaign for the Arts. It might have been a non-party campaign, but that didn’t stop her snotty reply effectively accusing me of being a ‘loony lefty’. I was barely getting over having started my political life, courtesy of my background, as a Tory, but she helped me further along that road.

Baker takes great care to be as understanding as possible of the motives of many who so strongly backed Section 28 and never falls into the easy trap of simply lambasting him, though is less obviously forgiving of their friends in the media who peddled a diet of hate to their readers.

But central to the book are the stories of those whose lives were negatively affected by Section 28 and the homophobia that it enabled. It had a lasting impact for many.

However, brought together disparate parts of the LGBT community to fight back against and, in the process, build the case – and support for – greater equality, with a campaign including some incredibly inventive, non-violent protests.

Following the repeal of the clause in devolved Scotland in 2000, it finally came off the books elsewhere in 2003.

Reading this today feels like having a premonition.

Toward the end of Outrageous! Baker says that “Tristan Garel-Jones, the deputy chief whip for the Conservatives, apparently called it [Section 28], a piece of meat thrown by Mrs Thatcher to her right-wing wolves”.

I finished the book the same day on which reports leaked out that Tory Party leadership frontrunner Liz Truss had said – according to her supporter and former party leader Iain Duncan Smith – that she regretted her involvement in the Bill to ban conversion ‘therapy’.

Duncan Smith – a Catholic convert who once used the word “sin” in a discussion on unemployment – suggested that she would like to bin the legislation altogether.

This was subsequently denied by her team, according to North London Tory MP Mike Freer, who told his local newspaper that he had asked.

Other reports have suggested that, if elected as Tory leader (and thus prime minister), Truss would also elevate the culture war loving, LGBT+ despising Kemi Badenoch to her front bench.

This is, of course, precisely the sort of raw red meat that Garel-Jones mentioned. The Conservative Party had a maximum membership of 180,000 as of 2019 (the party is not open about its membership) as opposed to 47.6 million Parliamentary electoral registrations in the following year.

Those who will select the new Tory leader/PM are a tiny minority of the electorate as a whole and, on the basis of their likely preferred news reading being the Telegraph, the Mail and the Express, they are still being fed a toxic diet of homophobic – and particularly transphobic – bile.

 

The first two of those, together with the Sun, have been cited as the biggest new media defenders of Section 28.

In the last couple of days, Suella Braverman, the attorney general, has stated that schools that talk about gender change could face Ofsted sanctions. Nothing like Section 28 at all, then.

Yet even within this constituency of the Conservative Party membership, YouGov polling has shown that just 8% of those members want “combatting the woke agenda” prioritised, so it’s difficult to see who is being appealed to here. A wider constituency of far-right voters that switched from the likes of UKIP and helped the Conservatives to a massive majority in 2019? Religious fundamentalists from across faiths who hate anything that isn’t heterosexual marriage? Groups that might vote for the Conservatives at the next general election?

 

It’s difficult not to feel deeply concerned about what the coming period will bring in terms of equality and for the LGBT+ community. Or not to feel that, once again, campaigns and protests might need to be organised.

 

Baker’s book is a salutary reminder of the harm of such intolerance – but also of how the fight back can succeed. It is very much worth a read.

• Outrageous! The story of Section 28 and Britain’s battle for LGBT education by Paul Baker is published by Reaktion Books

 

A Secret Garden for our age

In 2019 BC (Before COVID) when The Other Half and I were still regularly visiting the cinema on our way home from work on a Friday, we had already seen, more than once, the trailer for a new adaptation of Frances Hodgson’s Burnett’s classic children’s novel, The Secret Garden.

Trailers are teasers, of course  but this one provoked optimism and indeed prompted me, in February this year (still just about BC) to re-read the book.

 

The copy had been my mother’s, which I had brought home when I cleared my parents' home after their deaths. 

It was a new edition from 1942, with colour plates, a tattered dust jacket and inside, a loose, unfilled bookplate from the token with which she had almost certainly bought it for her eleventh birthday.

On the bookplate was a picture of a giant tulip growing up from bombed urban ruins.

I hadn't seen the bookplate for years but, while I remembered it visually, it was only this year that I felt a sense of what it was about.

 

On 3 May the year, CE (COVID Era), on the third anniversary of my mother’s death, the book and plate found itself in a poem I wrote about her.

 

Today, I finally caught up with the new film, released in a hodgepodge of ways, given the pandemic, including via Sky Cinema.

 

The novel was written in 1911, but Burnett's work avoided any of the cloying sentimentality that might have been left over from the Victorian era. Both Mary Lennox and her cousin Colin are unpleasant children: as we discover, that is a direct result of their respective upbringings, and redemption and reform is possible.

 

Mary has been orphaned; Colin has lost his mother and been confined to a room in the family manor by, in effect, his father’s utter terror that his son is weak and will die like his mother before him.

 

Here, the film has been updated to 1947. And it suits a version of the story that reflects today’s far greater awareness and understanding of psychology, of mental health and ill health, of grief, loss and much more.

 

It also chimes with our growing understanding of the restorative – and indeed, redemptive – nature of nature. This is a film that, without doing so clunkily, acknowledges the benefits of nature for mental health, and thereby presents a subtle but strong environmental message too.

 

Nature needs to be healthy for us to be healthy. We cannot exist separately.

 

Jack Thorne’s script is to be applauded for all this – and for its eschewing of an easy sentimentalisation of the story; for making Mary and Colin both initially unpleasant, but also understandable and redeemable. It’s a fine line, and one that the film charts well.

 

Director Marc Munden lends the story a sense of the magical that is far more pronounced that in the novel, but it works – again feeding into that environmental theme.

 

This is a small cast, but Dixie Egerickx as Mary, Edan Hayhurst as Colin and Amir Wilson as Dickon are excellent as the children upon whose shoulders any sense of believability in this fable rests.

 

As the adults, Colin Firth as Lord Craven and Julie Walters as housekeeper Mrs Medlock are … well, precisely what you’d expect from a pair of such fine actors.

 

If I have a criticism, it’s primarily that Dickon and his sister (Isis Davis) are not seen as fully as they are in the novel and that we don’t get as full a sense of the Yorkshire moors in the film as we do in the novel.

 

But this is probably a bit whiny – and I have to say that I do love the giant rhubarb!

 

Walks of witness, steps free of shame

Placard protesting against the homophobic laws of the
Sultan of Brunei, Hassanal Bolkiah, who, in true
Freudian style, has ‘anal’ as part of his name

Last Friday was Whit Friday – a day that means little throughout most of the UK but which, in parts of the North West of England, has great cultural significance.

In the morning, members of local Christian churches march through their town in a walk of witness, usually with banners for each church (think a religious version of trade union banners) and sometimes with a brass band from, say, a local school.

In the afternoon – in Mossley at least – there’d be games at the local football ground. In the evening, there’d be the band contests, where brass bands would travel from town to town, à la Brassed Off, competing in each contest before travelling to the next one.

For eight years, when my family lived in the Tameside region, I would have the day off school. I’d march with my father’s church, enjoy the games and then hang around outside the church itself while the bands marched in and out of St Joseph’s school yard to perform.

Eight years was the longest we spent anywhere when I was growing up: the sound of brass bands is woven into my being.

Yours Truly

My last Whit walk was 40 years years ago on Friday 8 June, 1979.

This year, on 6 June, I took part in what was, in many ways, another walk of witness and my first such one: London Pride.

I’d thought about going to Pride before – only as a member of the crowd, mind – but then somehow just never got around to it.

With the benefit of hindsight, I think that I was afraid of being outed to the only two people I was in contact with whom I wasn’t out – my parents. My father had, back in those Mossley days, carefully nurtured an awareness in me that people who knew him would see me doing things and report.

Trafalgar Square

It happened at least once that I can specifically remember now, about something ridiculously innocuous, but it was an idea that lingered. I don’t think that such things leave you easily, even if you cease to be consciously aware of them.

I never told Mother and Dad that I was bisexual: by the time I’d come out to myself, I wondered what the point would be: wouldn’t it just risk seriously upsetting them, given their attitudes toward sexuality – and sin?

A few days before this year’s Pride, a work email newsletter arrived in my inbox, announcing that there were spare places with our organisation’s contingent for the parade itself. I took the opportunity. It seemed an apt moment too, as I work through some of the things that have risen to the surface in the tumult of dealing with both parents’ deaths since 2017, plus my own cancer diagnosis last year.

The day of Pride, I got to Portland Place in good time, but realising that, in olive linen trousers, walking shoes and a branded UNISON t-shirt, I was woefully underdressed. So I picked up a little rainbow clip-on bow tie. I was still underdressed, but not quite as much so.

Steampunky Gothy greetings

The atmosphere was almost overwhelming. As an old friend noted to me later on Facebook, you feel surrounded by warmth and good feelings. I have never experienced anything like it. It was extraordinary to have people reach out from the massive crowd (an estimated 1.5 million on the streets of London) to high five as they wished you the best.

There was plenty of outré behaviour and attire – and I like that: I adore the transgressive nature of drag, for instance.

And off course, it was less than a week into my One Million Steps Challenge, so perfectly suited.

Perfectly suited too, for being not simply a utilitarian walk.

Some ask why Pride is needed these days. Well, when you hear and read of rising homophobic and transphobic attacks, you realise why.

When you read of the protests against the No Outsiders programme being taught in Birmingham schools, you understand why Pride is necessary.

Indeed, just today, it’s been reported that the government has been accused of being “too slow” to tackle the issue – and support the school: accused by the woman tasked with tackling extremism.

‘God is love’

But now, it seems that the protests by some Muslim parents, on the grounds of their religious beliefs, against teaching children that all people are equal, are encouraging others.

According to this report, a group called Catholic Family Voice has been set up near Glasgow by a woman who describes herself as “excited” by what’s been happening in Birmingham. Another woman has been individually leafleting schools on the issue, ”aiming to disrupt, essentially,” while the founder of The Values Foundation makes it clear that she doesn’t ‘value’ equality.

“There’s no way that people of faith will teach it’s OK to be gay,” she said. “They won’t because the Bible tells us it isn’t OK to be gay.”

Yes. And the Bible tells us that we should do an awful lot of things that these people would not remotely suggest were appropriate these days.

It’s also worth noting at this juncture, that plenty of people of faith have no problem with the spectrum of sexuality, just as plenty of people of faith acknowledge that evolution is real.

But that’s as maybe. The point here is simple: it might seem that LGBT+ people have equality – in law, at least. But while they continue to be attacked, simply for being who they are and loving who they love, then the struggle is far from over.

I‘ll go with this

In many ways, in terms of a practical, day-to-day level, it’s not been particularly difficult for me: despite being out to people in my daily life, I’ve been in a relationship with a straight, male Other Half for 30 years (he knew before I recognised it myself), so people comfortably make assumptions and frankly, I’ve no interest in making my sexuality the subject of every first conversation with someone.

But almost four decades to the day since I last took a walk of witness – and now, not because I had no choice, but because I wanted to – I walked again.

In times like these, with the rise of the far-right revealing again the attitudes that gave rise to the pink triangle – the symbol stitched onto the concentration camp uniforms of LGBT+ inmates in Nazi Germany – witness is vital.

This year is also the 50th anniversary of Stonewall, with all that began. Our history is important.

So too is showing solidarity with those still being persecuted and even being killed: four LGBT refugees from Syria had finally arrived in the UK a couple of days before Pride. Finally, they could experience what it means to be out.

And it is also vital to say, as MP Angela Eagle recently did in a speech about the Birmingham schools protests: “We aren’t getting back in the closet”.

Mythology, cats and ceramics

 A view from Relais Regina Giovanna

Off the boat and into the Sorrento sunshine, we were far too early for hotel check-in but just in time for the start of lunch. Of the two waterside eateries, we picked Ristorante Bar Ruccio, since it seemed to have the most conventional and Italian-looking menu.

As it happened, it also had cats. Although not before we had food in front of us.

I rarely opt for soup – it’s usually too filling a starter for me – but the primavera caught my attention. I’m glad it did. A huge bowl of beautiful, seasonal vegetables in a light but flavoursome stock. Genuinely scrummy – bang full of flavour. I had grilled octopus next, refusing to let myself be put off by the previous evening’s poor Neapolitan experience.

A generous portion, it was shared with the two cats – a ginger tabby and, we believe, her daughter; still technically a kitten, but with a very grave face and advanced skills in the ‘give-me-food’ telepathy department.

Mummy tabby cat

It was a pleasant meal and the cats – who were clearly not considered a problem by the staff – added to the experience. Then it was into a taxi for the trip up the steep, hairpin road into central Sorrento and then south along the coast, hugging the hillside, to the hotel.

Relais Regina Giovanna is a series of buildings, gloriously refurbished and set in a 50-acre estate. The hotel itself has a dozen rooms, while a block 500 metres away has five apartments for self catering. Other buildings are dotted around, including one that hosts yoga classes.

The estate is a joy to wander in. It’s never going to be crowded and includes olive and lemon groves, plus the vegetable and herb gardens that supply the hotel restaurant. Relais Regina Giovanna makes its own olive oil and limoncello.

There’s a small, private beach at the top of a small inlet, with clear emerald waters washing gently in. Unfortunately, we were too early in the season for that to be open. Another time, then. And more of that another day.

‘I want the octopus’

Signs let you know what birds you might see: during our stay, we spotted at least one buzzard, many white-throated swifts and flashes of bright yellow that we eventually identified as canaries, plus abundant Italian wall lizards.

In places, you can hear only the sea below, the wind in the trees, birds singing and your own thoughts. If you want an idea of paradise …

And at this point, let’s digress for a spot of history.

Queen Giovanna D’Angiò was a sovereign of Naples. It seems that, between 1371 and 1435, she often went to the area. And it now bears her name.

So this is a point: the whole area reeks of history: you simply cannot escape it.

And at this juncture, let’s take a step back a few decades.

In the first year at my (state) grammar school, everyone did Latin. I took to it like the proverbial duck to water, while modern languages never caught my imagination.

Around the estate

To be fair, that might have been influenced by my father who, while he had nothing negative to say about Latin, was disgruntled at my having to learn French and, when I had to swap Latin for German in my second year, was apoplectic. It was not, after all, Why We Won the War.

But stopping Latin after a year meant that I was not introduced to the mythology of southern Europe. When I finally came across any mythology it was years later, when a friend told me the story of the Nibelungen.

I was gripped. Memory can be a dodgy thing, but I don’t remember my parents telling stories like that (or even reading to me). German and Norse mythology leapt in to a vacuum. I’ve dipped into the Classical variety since, but it’s always seemed tame.

Yet between the presence of Vesuvius and the knowledge that this part of the Mediterranean has the far older sounding name of the Tyrrhenian Sea, something started to come to life.

On a long, narrow street in Sorrento, after passing shops laden with mass-produced souvenirs, we found Terrerosse.

Terrerosse bowl

It’s a small shop with space at the back to work. There, Allessandro and Enrica create unique ceramics that are bound up in the mythology of the region.

Sorrento … the name comes from ‘siren/mermaid’: winged creatures that became sea-bound.

If you’re in Sorrento, seek out Via Fuoro, 73 – because the work of Allessandro and Enrica has a magical, mythical quality you’ll rarely find elsewhere.

We’ll be going back in September. Italy has captivated us. In August, we will now spending time in the shadow of Etna, at Aci Trezza, before making our way back to Sorrento and Relais Regina Giovanna. I fully intend to make a trip to Terrerosse my primary ceramic aim of the the holiday.

And in the meantime, I find myself increasingly dreaming of an amazing mythological landscape that is coming alive for me as never before.

A very, very, very dark – but funny – matter

Copenhagen, the 19th century: Danish celebrity author Hans Christian Anderson is regaling an audience with his latest fairy tale, The Little Mermaid.

There are celebratory fireworks and showers of admiration for the writer, but there are also ghostly figures.

And when Anderson returns home, climbing to the attic of his house, it is to discuss these ghosts with Marjory, a disabled Congolese pygmy, who he keeps in a box and who writes the stories for him.

But why doesn’t she try to escape; is she and her situation unique and what does Charles Dickens have to do with it all?

Martin McDonagh’s latest play, A Very Very Very Dark Matter, is going to upset people. Though to be strictly accurate, it’s still previewing until 24 October and it’s already provoked Indignant of Islington and Vexed of Vauxhall to express their horror online.

One can imagine this work will trigger an orgy of offence.

Taken at the most simple face value, the play laughs at colonialism and thumbs its nose at the crimes of empires. And because McDonagh has written a funny play, the audience laughs along and, therefore, becomes complicit.

Except that this is not supposed to be taken at face value, and only a monumental naïf or someone utterly dedicated to a peacock-like display of their social justice warrior credentials would not understand or would pretend not to understand what McDonagh is doing.

And incidentally, if you push that idea that he’s genuinely laughing at the crimes of imperialism, then you’re saying that the black cast members are Uncle Toms, and I would suggest people don’t go down that route.

There isn’t much of a plot, as such. Like Stephen Sondheim’s Follies, this is more of a meditation on a number of themes.

Not least among these is the trivialising of the treatment of the crimes of colonialism – an attitude that has reared its head again in recent years, with continuing exceptionalism and the concomitant belief of some Brexiteers that, once free from the EU, the UK can build Empire II and indeed, the rest of the world is ready to rush into our arms to give us the bestest ever trade deals with only five minutes discussion needed. Because we’re Britain, doncha know.

Of course, the same can be said of the Trump-era US too, with the crude and fact-free racism of the MAGA crowd, convincing itself that ‘true America’ is WASP America.

Such attitudes never went away, but increased nationalism elsewhere around the globe means they’re re-emerging. And therefore, it is important to remind people of just what nationalism and colonialism means in reality.

McDonagh – a writer in whom the Irish gothic tradition meets London-Irish experience, with punk mixed in (as Fintan O’Toole’s excellent programme essay notes) – is ideally suited to push boundaries so that, while A Very Very Very Dark Matter is very funny, it isn’t what you’d describe as ‘comfortable’.

In concentrating on Belgian imperialism – and the genocide in what was the Congo – the play raises what will, for many, be history that they are not familiar with. In pointing up the rape of the region for resources, he even manages a sideswipe at environmentally-holier-than-thou cyclists, noting that while Leopold II’s publicly-stated intention (as with other countries) was to ‘civilise’ and Christianise, the less public one was the desire for ivory and rubber – here, with the latter used for bicycle tires.

A Very Very Very Dark Matter is probably not for the faint-hearted or those who get upset by ‘bad language’ – it’s gloriously sweary in a very Irish way.

It’s short – 90 minutes with no interval – angry and funny at the same time, and defies easy labels.

Director Matthew Dunster has done an excellent job and Anna Fleische’s design is superb.

As Marjory, Johnetta Eula’Mae Ackles, on her debut, is simply outstanding and more than holds her own with her massively experienced co-star.

Jim Broadbent as Anderson is a delight as the bumbling, eccentric and crass writer, living off Marjory’s talent and, all the while, pleading with her that *his* colonial crimes aren’t as bad as those of others. And his swearing is a glory.

Phil Daniels as “Charles FUCKING DICKENS!” is a hoot too, and getting Tom Waits to record the role of narrator adds both to the fairy-tale aspect of the piece, as well as the sinister and eerie nature of it.

Bloody brilliant.

• A Very Very Very Dark Matter, is at London’s bridgetheatre.co.uk until 6 January 2019.