JANIE Dee leads the cast in Laughing Boy, which comes to Bath Theatre Royal from Tuesday 4th to Saturday 8th June, direct from its West End premiere. Written and directed by Stephen Unwin, this powerful new play is based on a true story as first told in Justice for Laughing Boy by Sara Ryan.
The play and book tell the story of Connor Sparrowhawk. He loves buses, Eddie Stobart, and Lego. He also has learning disabilities. When he dies an entirely preventable death in NHS care, his mum Sara (played by Janie Dee) can’t get a straight answer as to how it happened. But Sara and her family won’t stop asking questions and soon an extraordinary campaign emerges. Demanding the truth, it uncovers a scandal of neglect and indifference that goes beyond Connor’s death to thousands of others.
Laughing Boy is also a portrait of Connor himself – a young man who generated enormous joy in his family and friends, a boy who was surrounded by laughter and love wherever he went. Both personal and political, Sara Ryan story is impassioned, frank and surprisingly funny.
Stephen Unwin said: “It’s a real honour to bring Connor Sparrowhawk’s story to the stage and I’m touched that Sara Ryan has entrusted me with it. I just hope Laughing Boy catches the love and laughter, the grief and the commitment, and the creativity, energy and blazing commitment that was the mark of the original campaign for justice for Connor and a better world for so many. As the father of a young man with learning disabilities and epilepsy, this runs deep.”
Sara Ryan said: “This adaptation will bring what should be a national scandal to new audiences. I look forward to the laughter, the love and the sheer brilliance it will encapsulate, while packing a mighty punch.”
Double Olivier Award-winning Janie Dee is one of the UK’s most versatile actors. Her recent credits include The Motive and the Cue and Follies at the National Theatre, and Hand to God in the West End. Janie wonf Olivier Awards for her roles in the West End productions of Carousel and Comic Potential. Previously at the Theatre Royal Bath, she has starred in An Hour And A Half Late in 2022, Old Times in 2007 and Mack & Mabel in 2006, and at the Ustinov Studio in Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike in 2019, which opened in Bath before transferring to London in 2021.
She also regularly starred in The Peter Hall Company Seasons at the Theatre Royal Bath, appearing in 2009 in Shaw’s The Apple Cart, in 2005 in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, and in 2003 in Coward’s Design for Living and Pinter’s Betrayal. Her screen credits include Death in Holy Orders, The Murder Room, London’s Burning, Midsomer Murder and the films Me and Orson Welles, Love Me Still and Official Secrets.
Connor is played by Alfie Friedman, who appeared in The Witches of Eastwick in the West End and The Undeclared War on Channel 4.The play also features Forbes Masson as Rich, Daniel Rainford as Tom, Lee Braithwaite as Owen, Charlie Ives as Will and Molly Osborne as Rosie.
Stephen Unwin is an award-winning British theatre and opera director. He has directed more than 50 plays and operas. In 1993, he founded English Touring Theatre, for whom he directed more than 30 productions. This is the 15th play he has directed at the Theatre Royal Bath, the most recent being A Song At Twilight in 2019 and Farm Hall in 2023.
Photograph by Alex Brenner