By the early 20th century, petty criminal John Jones had become a local folk hero due to his notorious prison escapes, earning the nicknames Coch Bach y Bala (The Little Redhead of Bala) and the Welsh Houdini. Theatr Clwyd’s The Red Rogue of Bala imagines what happened when he went back to north Wales after breaking out of Ruthin Gaol for the final time in 1913. This debut play by Chris Ashworth-Bennion (The Telegraph’s former TV and radio editor) is a darkly humorous meditation on how legends are created and the things and people we choose to believe in.
Set in a local pub, with the First World War looming, the poacher and thief regales the punters with mythologised tales of his audacious escapades, captivating them and the audience alike. Yet as the illicit love affair between Jones’s son and the English landowner’s daughter is revealed, filial loyalty is tested when Jones Jr is asked to sell his father out and hand him over to the police.
With the appearance of a giant cauldron and the mock trial of a dead badger, the play has overtones of Joe Orton and Martin McDonaugh’s black comedy, Dan Jones’s production mixes brio and pathos, enhanced by the evocative period costumes and Mark Bailey’s sparse bar room set design.
Simon Holland Roberts as petty criminal John Jones – Kirsten McTernan
Reminiscent of Jerusalem’s Rooster Byron, the roguish character of Jones is played with a Falstaffian swagger by Simon Holland Roberts. Beneath the self-aggrandisement, he is at once rogue, magician and charlatan.
There are many other fine performances. Qasim Mahmood is suitably pompous as the Kipling-quoting landowner Reginald Jones-Bateman while Julian Lewis Jones is both delightfully dour and histrionic as the cuckolded publican Sian Pritchard.
With the recent cases of criminals mistakenly released from British prisons, The Red Rogue of Bala is oddly timely. This lyrical rumination on incarceration and emancipation, the ever-changing nature of community, land ownership and power speaks to the moment with a moral urgency. In Ashworth-Bennion, Denbighshire has found a critic-turned-playwright intent on spreading some theatrical stardust.
Theatr Clwyd until Nov 22; theatreclwyd.com
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