During this impressive one hour show, amounting to a 60-minute monologue which is a great feat, particularly on a hot day in a small dark room at the Edinburgh Fringe, John Travers makes a joke about getting on a bus from Dublin to Belfast and subsequently going back in time thirty years.
For those of you who have never been to Belfast, or for those young enough to not fully understand the turbulent history of the Northern Irish city, it may seem an odd statement to make but Rosemary Jenkinson’s play Billy Boy alludes to a world where it may be truer than people think. Yet Belfast is a city going through change. There is hope and some of that hope comes in the form of an unlikely hero: Aaron Orr – bonfire builder.
It is easy to look at something from the outside and bring preconceived ideas – loyalist bonfires (bonies) are certainly one of those things – but Travers brings to the stage a raw honesty and a plethora of characters so likeable that the audience begins to understand some of the reasoning behind the ceremonial burning ritual.
Framed by real historical events and based on interviews with some of the bonfire builders themselves Billy Boy charts the progress of both the fire and of Aaron’s prospects in a community fighting to be heard.
Although a serious subject matter Billy Boy is highly entertaining due in equal measure to Jenkinson’s writing and to the superb performance from Travers who slips seamlessly from stereotypical Ulster ‘Mam’ to Dutch girlfriend, Big Davie Weir to King Billy and a host of others before coming back to the central character again and again. Humour abounds, generating both laughter and empathy from the audience and it is unapologetically NOT woke – in fact, Aaron tells us, his friends are barely awake, let alone woke!
It is real and it is honest and it is this which shines through on stage.