Last Friday I went to see the theatre adaptation of Sara Ryan’s book ‘Justice for Laughing Boy.’ The story, and the joy, rage and sadness contained within, are close to home. If you’re not aware of Connor and the story of his life and death, then it may be worth reading this post I wrote last summer on the 10th anniversary of his passing first.
As we walked from dinner towards the theatre Louise, a friend of my mum’s who is an actor, told us to make sure that we used the toilets before the play started as the loos were not conveniently placed. I didn’t quite understand until I walked down the stairs and rounded the corner into the theatre to see the door to the toilets was literally on the stage. I was nervous and I thought it would be best to go one last time, I did not want to have to disturb the performance. In truth, I was also going to get some loo roll to soak up the tears that I knew were coming. When I got back my mum handed me and my sister a tissue each without saying anything. My other brother had chosen not to come, deciding, very understandably to do something less intense with his Friday night.
I braced myself as the opening scene began in which Sara, Connor’s mum, got that phone call and rushed to the hospital. Already spectres from my own life were making my heart prickle. When Sara introduces her family, Connor’s siblings,
Sara: Rosie is Connor’s big sister. She always defended him.
Rosie: I loved him, that’s all. I loved him
the tears began to flow. I had always tried to defend Spencer but the fact that I was here, watching this play which resonated so deeply reminded me that I had failed. Fortunately, some well-practised compartmentalisation reflexes kicked in. For those who are unaware, Laughing Boy tells the story of Connor Sparrowhawk, a boy who loved buses and his dog, among many other things. Connor also had learning disabilities and epilepsy. In 2013 he drowned after having a seizure in the bath, whilst his ‘carers’ completed a Tesco shop in an office across the hall.
The day after my Mum admitted that she had been nervous about seeing the play, for obvious reasons, but that she was pleased with how the evening unfolded. By sheer chance, Louise knew the actor who was playing Sara, so after the play we waited as the cast packed up their dressing rooms ahead of moving the show to Bath. It was lovely to speak with them and I think they were pleased to know how deeply the show had impacted us. There was hopeful talk of spreading the message and raising awareness but none of us could ignore the fact that 8 and a half years after Connor’s death, our Spencer had died in the exact same situation (minus the bath and trade Tesco shop for bland scrolling). As we wandered across the narrow Piccadilly street and collapsed into the pub I wondered what, if anything, had changed.
I sat there numbly, trying not to drink my pint at an alarming rate, thinking about what I had just witnessed. It had been a whirlwind backwards in time, like someone holding up a mirror to some of the most traumatic moments of my life. In one scene a solicitor had suggested to Sara that she needed to bring Connor’s body back to the hospital to get a piece of his brain tissue for testing, reminding me that we also did this. And whereas “Connor’s heart valves were taken from him, quick as a flash” we cremated Spencer’s empty skull after donating his brain to medical research. “I like to think some young person somewhere caught some of his magic” Sara says. I comforted myself against the creeping image of the procedure by thinking that maybe, just maybe, we might prevent someone from enduring what we are enduring and in doing so, keep their magic flickering for another day. As well as a passage back in time the play also staged life events that are yet to happen to us. Gruelling inquests in bland Kafka-esque coronial courts with emotionally dead journalists stood outside. It’s hard to tap into all this, just how long this may drag out. It has been 2 and a half years since Spencer died and we are still waiting for the CPS to return a verdict on any criminal proceedings which usually take precedence over inquests. It is likely to be several years still before Spencer’s inquest begins.
Fortunately, Laughing Boy has another, in my opinion, much more important message. Early on in the play, there is a short scene, barely a couple of lines, in which Connor visits Dan the dentist. Connor asks some typically personal and salacious questions about Dan’s love life which runs like water off the duck’s back. “It’s people like that,” Sara says, “who make all the difference.” When I think of our life as a family, of Spencer’s life, I cannot think of it without including the vast tapestry of people who in ways big and small propped us up. From doctors to friends to the young women working in blockbusters who would sit there smiling while Spencer serenaded them for the 4th time. Tonight, at Jermyn Street Theatre it was no different.
The woman sat to my right had come from Northern Ireland that morning with her daughter; having followed Sara’s inspirational campaign after losing a child of her own in a mental health setting, she simply had to see it. Also in attendance was Connor’s caseworker from Inquest and her colleagues, many of whom I know well from our involvement with the charity and from their ever-endearing support. In fact, we had been put in touch with Inquest via Paul Bowen who we had had dinner with before the play and who now sat in the row in front. Bowen, Connor’s “silver fox” barrister, had serendipitously met my parents by a pool in Turkey more than 15 years ago. As a result, my parents followed Connor’s case closely and reached out to Paul after Spencer died. The communities that grow around people like Connor, and his family, have a unique magnetism and love that makes them more than the sum of their parts. Being able to view the play with so many people who were involved in the story was a real privilege. Many people who saw Laughing Boy over its 5-week running in London will have already known about or been affected by its story, but there will have been some who did not. Whilst the play created a space of remembering for many, it carries an important political message. There are 1,500,000 people with learning disabilities in this country who are not treated like the rest of us, like human beings. For the last week, Laughing Boy has been in Bath theatre, spreading solidarity and this message far and wide, to similarly rapturous applause I hear.
In the pub, I finished the abandoned margarita on the table and asked my sister if she wanted another drink who nodded without hesitation. My mum was engrossed in conversation with the writer of the play, Stephen Unwin who, in another example of these small, folded, communities, has a son who is at the same college Spencer attended.
In the latest issue of the London Magazine Christiana Spens opens her essay, ‘Reading the Pain of Others’, by acknowledging that “representing the pain of others in art can be a challenging endeavour.” Spens reckons with the line we tell ourselves that bearing witness is of value, despite our knowledge that the dead will remain so, and more will join them. One may wonder what the point is if nothing changes but art is more than a tool for political expediency, it is a reclamation. The play is a record of fact for Connor’s parents and siblings, a documentation that defies the pile of dusty, soulless documents that claim to represent the truth, though which never can because they were written against love. This play, however, is love all the way down. Bearing witness is never passive, Spens argues, “to see and feel another’s pain is to be transformed, it is to be compelled to action.” I once read that beauty is the capacity to be affected. Whilst the affect of Laughing Boy may appear to be pain and loss, it without a doubt transformed those who saw it, something undeniably beautiful.
My sister and I smoked a cigarette as we walked to the tube. Not wanting to wait and watch her children smoke, my mum and Louise left us standing in the bright city lights. I felt like I had been put blindfolded in a washing machine and then dumped on the street. “How are you feeling” I asked Ava, tentatively. “It’s a lot,” she said laughing, “quick back in your box.” She mimed stuffing a sleeping bag back into its sack. When we reached Waterloo we had just missed a train though we were both relieved as this meant we could head to a pub whilst we waited for the next train. When we got home, she chopped up an apple with some peanut butter and I poured a cognac. An hour or two later, as I refilled the tumbler, I said it is easy to get wrapped up in all that I have been writing about, the community, the politics, the injustice; but that when I think of Spencer, I feel nothing other than an irreconcilable emptiness. This is how Spens describes two memoirs about grief. Irreconcilable emptiness does not lend itself to a satisfying narrative but “it is only we, the heartbroken who can truly battle and long for a world where no one ever feels like this again.” If Laughing Boy has passed on a mere fraction of his family’s courage, and his humour, to those who watched, the world will be a better place because of it.
mountains of my life 