Rhona Foulis
posted 12 June 2006

Market Boy is Nicholas Hytner's first commission for the National since he took over as artistic director in 2003. Writer David Eldridge and director Rufus Norris have previously collaborated on Festen. Here, Eldridge transports us to his home town of Romford, as Norris reanimates the 760 year-old market.

A single mother marches her shy son onto a bald stage, thrusting him into the spotlight downstage. Upstage, the famous 1979 Tory election poster reads 'Labour Isn't Working'. Suddenly, an A Team-like van tears through the poster to the assaulting sound of Frankie Goes to Hollywood's 'Relax'. Out pour three market boys, setting up their shoe stall, climbing its metal frame like monkey bars, to the music and to the slick choreography of Frantic Assembly's Scott Graham and Steven Hoggett. It is 1985 and this is Romford Market in Essex.

13-year old Boy is pushed into working on the market by his mother. Mouse, Don and Snooks (the three other shoe stall boys) induct us and Boy into the ways and wants of the market place. The shoe stall is a patriarchal order of male workers, with the boys as brothers, the trader as father and women as their customers: gypsy thieves, older women, daughters, transsexuals, 'posh totty', single mothers and (on an intake of breath) 'the most beautiful woman in Romford'. Trading on the market stall is, we learn, a fine art, a learned craft of a particular social etiquette - flattery without cockiness. But it is also a hostile place to the uninitiated; as the uncompromising fish vendor shouts, 'Clear off, before I pour a bucket of shit over you'. And so, Mouse, Don and Snooks set Boy an inevitably sexual initiation ritual, which is only the beginning of Boy's rites of passage.

Eldridge's plot plays out pubescent Market Boy's development into adulthood, discovering drugs, responsibility, confidence, and women. The market provides this fatherless Boy with his sexual education - seeing a woman naked for the first time and later, 'losing his cherry'. Unfortunately for humiliated Boy, the first bare naked lady turns out to be his mother shagging the trader, but this proves even more significant in Boy's sexualisation. Freud would see it as a critical point in his transition to adulthood, as Boy realises his sexual separation from his mother, therefore, his subjectivity. Boy begins to distance himself from his mother, and pursues Girl instead. Eldridge captures the awkwardness and uncertainty of first love with comic accuracy. Boy and Girl sit down to a nervously silent candle-lit dinner, desperately suppressing their cruder motives. Then the van unsubtly backs into their scene, and the two of them jump in to get jiggy.

The Market Place is an institution, a power structure like any other, with rules and abuse of those rules. At its head proudly sits the Market Inspector, who warns: 'As long as you're on this market, you'll do what this horrible bastard says', but exploits his power, not least by flirting with Boy. The skill of Eldridge's lies in its representation of the market place as a socio-political microcosm, exposing and ridiculing the prejudices of the 1980s. Norris's captivating stage pictures identify iconic moments of Thatcherite politics, social mobility, sexuality and racism. In one fantastical scene, Norris parodies the cultural constructs of masculinity and femininity, as dolled-up women and transvestites, robed in red and white polka dot dresses, stiletto heels and long blonde wigs, parade around the revolving stage in a production line-style procession. The market is a sexist, racist place, but its prejudices are strangely soft and non-discriminatory. The black trader turns racist prejudice on its head by mock-threatening all his new market boys: 'Have you ever kissed a black man?'

Market Boy also dramatises and part-parodies 1980s politics. Thatcher is represented as a sort of Spitting Image, always dressed in blue, with a witch-like pointed nose, rising forehead and bouffant, stale hair. In the opening market scene, she literally walks over a market boy, before exiting in slow motion, pushing another boy out of the way and regally waving like the Queen, as her waving hand turns two fingers up at the audience. Does successful Romford represent 'the free market' that this grocer's daughter lauded? 'It's only free if you pay your rent', the Market Inspector retorts. Thatcher's Britain eliminated the social state in favour of entrepreneurs; 'opportunity for all' meant that anyone could be rich but no-one would help the poor.

The six-year span of the play parallels Boy's development with that of the market place and, by extension, the political landscape of Britain. A former market trader becomes a City Boy, labelled a 'yuppie' by his former colleagues and returning to Romford in a white convertible with Thatcher at his side. 'The most beautiful woman in Romford' ditches her husband in favour of the upwardly mobile shoe stall trader, but eats up his cash with her avarice. The nationalistic market butcher glorifies Britannia and dons a Union Jack apron, before a faux-angelic Thatcher flies down on Union Jack wings to the tune of 'Thank Christ for Maggie'. But the chants don't last, as the market crashes and recession hits, alongside the accidental death of Mouse, who - with stunningly engineered movement - falls from the railings in slow motion, to his early death. The ensuing sombre tone focuses the audience to observe whence capitalist aspirations spring. Market Boy resolves to leave for college and become a stock broker, claiming that he doesn't need father-figure trader anymore.

Norris's production inventively conveys the energy and noise of the market place, aided by Graham's and Hoggett's movement, and imaginatively identifies key social and cultural icons of the time. A hilarious rave scene takes place after Steve the Nutter returns from a clubbing 'trip' to Ibiza. At Winter, Thatcher waves a wand to illuminate Christmas lights, before conducting The Snowman's 'We're Walking in the Air'. Such random and delightfully bizarre moments show Norris at his best, as a master of stage imagery. Like Tin Tin, Market Boy is visually fun and extremely entertaining, but with the added joy of reminiscing the embarrassing 1980s. Paul Arditti has curated a Wham and Pet Shop Boys-filled soundtrack, accompanying Harriet Barsby's costume design, which flaunts luminous shell and ski suits.

The audience leaves the National's Olivier energised by Norris's production, but unenthused by Eldridge's tale. With over fifty roles in a cast of thirty-one, Eldridge perhaps bit off more than he could chew, writing enjoyable, but ultimately stereotyped, characters. The audience can fondly enjoy its empathetic identification with Market Boy's maturation, but the journey - and therefore Eldridge's plot - is a predictable one. After the day-glow effect has worn off, Market Boy seems a case of style over substance. But with Norris's direction and design team, what fabulous style that is.

Till 3 August 2006.