Ilford Boy review: Craig Stein's tap-dancing Pat steals Danny Lee Wynter's family drama

Craig Stein's tap-dancing Pat is the reason to see Ilford Boy, Danny Lee Wynter's sprawling family drama set in 80s and 90s Essex in the shadow of the Aids crisis. When this Black gay man swans back into town, the play lifts from predictable father-son friction into something the review calls "more effervescent".

The setting is specific: a showtune-loving nanna's house in Ilford, being cleared out by a fractious extended family. Broad Essex accents fill the stage. Ted, the quiet teenager at the centre, is played by Leo Whitfield Harris in his stage debut.

What is the family fighting about?

Everything, mostly. Ted is surrounded by loud, feuding relatives whose rusty views on queerness, race and masculinity grate against each other. His father, a bolshie Gershwyn Eustache Jr, pushes him toward boxing and girls. Ted grits his teeth, resists anything seen as weakness — and in doing so, the review notes, resists kindness too.

His mum (Ria Zmitrowicz) offers "an abundance of anguished love" amid the spiky arguments, which carry sharpness and humour. Some of the wider family, though, "could have more substance", the review finds.

How does the production look?

Tim Sheader directs, scattering the family across Peter McKintosh's "surprisingly sparse double-decked neon home". The review's verdict: the set doesn't quite reflect the chaos — or the occasional warmth — within. Flashbacks build the backstory and let the creative team have fun with costumes and hair across both timelines.

Why does Pat change the play?

While everyone else tells Ted how to be, Pat shows him another way. The turning point is Streisand: as Ted is drawn in by Pat's knowledge of Barbra Streisand, the drama moves away from predictable father-son dynamics.

The review captures the performance's texture — a whole life conveyed in small gestures:

• The way Pat looks "with disgust" at Ted's father
• How he talks about his lost love
• The hand he stretches out when the teenager asks him to dance

That last image, illuminated by "a brilliant moment of boldness" in the script and Ebony Molina's "glorious movement", is the one the review says lingers: "a beautiful man, up above the audience, leg kicked high in the air, radiant with life".

What does this change for Wynter?

The play's beating heart, the review says, "travels around on tap shoes" — a reminder that the Black Superhero playwright's busy scripts sharpen considerably when a mercurial outsider interrupts family routine. If Wynter's next work leans into that register, he has a proven scene-stealer to build on.