The Final Days of Simon Bacon
Palace Theatre, Southend

Patrick Hayes

The term 'geezer existentialism' was recently coined in the Observer to describe the angst-ridden lyrics of the laddish garage band The Streets. Whilst singer-songwriter Mike Skinner taking a few too many Es and ranting stoned dirges about how empty his life seems into a microphone hardly signifies a cultural trend, the introduction of geezer existentialism into the theatre by playwright/director Luke Condon is something worth keeping an eye on.

Condon's The Final Days of Simon Bacon had a short run at the Palace Theatre in Southend, Essex and was well received by sellout audiences of a very different kind from the retro-bohemian types who lurk around fringe theatres in Brighton and London.

On the night I attended, it was clear even before the play began that Condon's Double Act Productions had managed to generate genuine interest: the audience was an entire cross section of 'Sarf' Essex. Girls with denim jackets and thick gold jewellery, well-built geezers in jeans and white t-shirts (one with a nasty and seeminlgy very recent cut above his left eye), kids in Adidas tracksuits and hoodies, and slightly shabby bearded blokes.

The play itself had an all Essex cast who looked like if they weren't in the play, they could have been in the audience watching it, and several played characters quite similar to themselves. Watching The Final Days of Simon Bacon was an authentic Essex experience, more so even than donning a baseball cap and doing endless laps in a Vauxhall Nova around the seedy amusement arcades on Southend seafront. You were left in no doubt that you were watching a play written by an Essex geezer, performed by Essex geezers and watched by an audience of Essex geezers.

But why existentialist? Simply because this play, beneath the laddish guise, is brimming with anguish, abandonment, frustration and despair. But all you therapists and counsellors reading this shouldn't rub your hands with glee and hop on the Misery Line train in search of victims as it staggers to Southend through the muddy landfill site of London's trash that is Thurrock, past the dystopian oil refinery town of Canvey Island and alongside the rotting mud flaps of Leigh on Sea that smell so foul even the Thames seems to avoid flowing over them as much as possible. Despite the fatalism, the futility and frustration that underpins the play, the audience rolled about with laughter, cheered and clapped loudly after every scene. This is existentialism Essex-stylee - less geezers beginning to get angsty and frustrated about their lives, more geezers versus existentialism. And be assured, in The Final Days of Simon Bacon the geezers knock existentialism's block off. No contest.

The basic premise is that Simon Bacon (John Meyers), a young stoner on the dole, is told by a fortune teller that he has seven days left to live. Simon decides the skip his favourite daytime TV programmes and try to tie up loose ends in his life and give it some sense of meaning. The second half consists of his attempts to do this, all of which fail miserably, but in a very entertaining way (this, in no small part, is due to Terry Blackman, who surely has a career in BBC2 sitcoms beckoning). Simon's meeting with his dad yields nothing constructive, only more shouting and abuse. His attempt to treat his friends to an Arsenal game ends in them all being arrested by a bent copper and a brief reconciliation with his hyper-sensitive girlfriend leads inevitably to tears.

Briefly contemplating 'beating death' through suicide, Bacon instead decides to 'go out with a bang' and sleep with a prostitute on the predicted time of his death. Condon has little sympathy with his anti-hero - he dies with exactly the same persona as he lived and no epiphany could snap him out of it: even if it could do, the people around him would simply knock him back into his previous way of life. Bacon and the rest of the colourful cast embrace their stereotypical images in face of hard times rather than becoming racked with doubt.

Whilst it is refreshing to see this robust 'don't give a fuck' attitude in the face of issues of existentialist angst that would normally lead people down the path of depression and therapy, it doesn't take too long to before of the old mantra of John Stuart Mill 'better Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied' begins to sound: it is necessary to doubt the way we live our lives and to question how we act in the world around us in order to attain a true understanding about how to make our actions significant.

Condon is no fool and he has great potential as a young playwright. His greatest flaw at the moment, however, is that he hasn't yet written himself out of autobiography. The best dialogues he writes are spontaneous, those that would flow off his tongue in a banter down the pub. More reflective moments or structured jokes do not work quite as well, seeming a little too laboured, a little too unnatural. At the moment Condon holds up a mirror which reflects his audience but doesn't show them anything they didn't already know. These are early days, however, and Condon is on a very promising path we should all hope he will not stray from.

Without doubt the banter and chemistry between Luke Condon and Double Act associate James Adams on stage could easily allow them to become the Gallagher brothers of fringe theatre. The geezer existentialist vein is certainly ripe to be tapped, but it will only take Condon so far. If he can go on to say something more universal than just about life in Essex, then when, as they surely will, Double Act Productions deliver shows to a wider audience than their home crowd, they will not be seen as a novelty act spouting laddish humour and abuse, but as living up to the potential shown in this play.

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