David Pearson’s debut play, Firewing, part of Hampstead Theatre’s INSPIRE project for emerging writers, is a heartfelt two-hander about the importance of passing stuff on.
“Stuff” is a key word in the dialogue, the portmanteau word with which a young man called Marcus (Charlie Beck, pictured below right) pads out his sentences, a sign of his unfinished education. He has now found a mentor, Tim (Gerard Horan, pictured below left), an older man who is steadily filling in some of the gaps. Marcus, we learn, is a son devoted to a mother who loves to paint but seems to have been felled by depression and now doesn’t leave the house, or even her bed sometimes. His father, a keen amateur photographer, is absent.
Marcus is the successful applicant for Tim’s latest apprenticeship as a wildlife photographer. He later learns that he was chosen, not just because he and his mentor come from the same town, but because Tim found all the other applications too long and windy. The older man becomes his guide to using a camera and, more importantly, to learning what it means to take a photograph. (Tim never uses the word “photo”.) Firewing is the subject that made his name, a giant Siberian bird that had only been seen in the UK on the one occasion when Tim managed to fire off two shots at it with his old camera. This image has made him both a legend and the object of hostile scrutiny from those who believe he faked it. Marcus, too, has apparently landed a good shot, of a sea eagle that flew overhead while he and his father ate fish and chips on a bench at the seaside.
Much of the early part of the play consists of the comic exchanges between the two men, Tim’s responses pernickety and amusingly facetious as Marcus, an amiable turn from Charlie Beck, displays his ignorance. Horan is perfect casting here, a man who can move seamlessly from a commanding stare to a nimble witticism. But there is an affection behind his stern tutoring, not just for his craft but for the hapless young man he has chosen to share the hide with.
The tutoring in creating a shot is done with loving care — how to apply the "rule of thirds” when composing an image, which details to include to underpin its narrative content. It’s here that the overall dilapidated rustic nature of the set is a drawback, as the images Tim uses to illustrate his points, using an old slide projector and a wall-mounted corkboard, don’t have the clarity or vividness of colour required to make an impact, especially the image of the firewing itself.
As the plot unfolds, we learn why Marcus is really there, as does Tim accidentally; we discover where Marcus’s father is; and why Tim is particularly concerned to pass on his knowledge to a younger man. What emerges is a potentially poignant work that touches on a number of fruitful topics, from the importance of storytelling to the need to defend personal experience from the incursions of AI. It’s not the actors’ fault that the emotional core of the piece doesn’t quite ignite the way you want it to.
Part of Pearson’s schema is to show us the moment when the firewing passed over the hide while young Tim (also played by Beck) was there a generation before with his father (Horan), as rare a visitor in his life as the bird from Siberia. Whereas older Tim is a demanding but worthwhile mentor, Tim’s father is pugnacious and volatile, an unpleasant man who values none of the things his son does. It’s a tribute to Tim’s strength, we realise, that he escaped his father’s orbit.
Director Alice Hamilton handles this sudden one-off flashback effectively, aided by Good Teeth’s design, which offers a couple of simple ways to transform the set: the corkboard flips over to become a window with a dirty black plastic curtain, while the cast push a moveable shelving unit offstage completely and undergo minimal costume changes. Technically, this time-travelling is niftily done, and it’s also useful thematically, drawing a continuous line between younger Tim and Marcus; but the tactic as a whole is slightly distracting.
Pearson gives the piece a relatively feelgood ending, in which we can see Tim’s tutelage has produced results in Marcus, not least his enhanced understanding of the importance of emotional honesty. And for Tim himself, there is always the firewing photograph, which by the end has taken on the full status of an impossible dream that fleetingly came true. Inevitably, it feels like a chamber piece, but there is a punch to the dialogue that makes you hopeful for Pearson’s future writing.
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