Writer and Director: Steve North
The last time “punk rock singer, songwriter, troubadour” Johnny Commune performed in front of a live audience was at a Vote Leave celebration party, packed with “red-faced, Farage-loving, gammon-headed loons”, on the night of the Brexit referendum. He lost his daughter Anna that night. So furious was she with the anti-EU rhetoric that she vowed never to see or speak to him again.
Now Commune’s back on stage, angry as ever, with a mea culpa of sorts, and a desire to make peace with his estranged child. He has been taking acting lessons and has put together a show explaining how and why he got things so wrong. “Give me 10 minutes to explain”, he pleads with us. Just as well daughter Anna has rocked up, unannounced, to tonight’s show; finally, it seems, ready to hear him out.
We soon learn that Johnny Commune, the creation of actor and musician Steve North, is something of an unreliable narrator. He never met Tom Robinson or Joe Strummer at a gig or went to a Vote Leave party. He may not even have voted the way he says he did. North drifts in and out of his character with the slipperiness of a man constantly trying to rewrite his own persona. The nature of truth and identity, which are the core concerns of Something About England, are not necessarily the facts, but the process of what North / Commune calls “adhering to what one remembers”, however faulty the memory.
The first two-thirds of Something About England mashes up original verse and song, spoken lyrics from The Clash, The Jam and X-Rays Spex, and quite a bit of strident left-wing polemic. North’s (or it could be Commune’s – the distinction is rarely clear) analysis of what went wrong with Brexit, essentially boiled down to “the left didn’t have a plan”, is standard stuff and ignores the fact nobody else had a plan either. The final third is memoir-packed pathos, a story of North’s (again, it might be Commune’s) need to find a father figure. The show really ought not to work, but it does and is unexpectedly, enthrallingly marvellous.
Runs until 29 August 2026.
Camden Fringe runs until 30 August 2026
