Ed Edwards’ script for England & Son is a scathing analysis of how the UK’s colonial adventures destroyed domestic life as effectively as they plundered the world. The story centres around a young man and his inability to resist slipping into a dark life of crime and drugs. Along the way it traces the consequences of his father’s time in the army, and complicity between consumption and violence in a nation built on the oppression of a working class, which itself is driven to become oppressor of the Empire’s victims. 

Mark Thomas’ charismatic performance captures both the tragedy of our protagonist’s life and the underlying violence. By turns charming and virulent, he strides and cajoles, cries and recalls, unfolding incidents from his life that piece together the legacy of imperial adventures. Never flinching from the hard truths of Empire, nor dwelling on the sensational gore, the script is exquisitely crafted. Despite the brutality of his behaviour, the protagonist is sympathetic and charming.

The playwright’s deft touch is placed at the service of a serious condemnation of how British success occludes the atrocities that enabled it; genteel past-times and ancestral wealth have supported cruelty, murder, and military occupations. The personal and the political mesh together, the boundary between victim and oppressor are blurred, but the austere moral intensity of script and performance are never compromised.

England & Son, Summerhall, until 27 August, 1.10pm. Catch England & Son on tour around the UK until Saturday 9 December.