Ryan Shorthouse reviews James Graham's new drama, Sons of York

That greedy sod. Playwright James Graham had two acclaimed plays showing in London at the same time this month. ToryBoyz used the army of talent in the National Youth Theatre to depict the montage of often conflicting views and personalities within the modern Tory party.

It caused waves inside the Westminster Village, luring members of the Shadow Cabinet to Soho. Such has been its success that a member of Cameron’s frontbench team has written about it in the Guardian. It surely deserves a run in the West End. And now Graham has Sons of York running. All at the age of 26. To steal a line from one of the characters, I think that’s magic.

Sons of York is set in the home of a working-class family in Hull on the eve of the Winter of Discontent in 1978. The struggles they face are plentiful, their lives familiar to anyone brought up in a modest northern home. Gran is losing it. Rambling granddad is a stubborn patriarch, refusing to let his son opt out of the general strike. The 16 year old grandson Mark is cheeky. His dad Jim has a volcanic temper. His mum Brenda worries about the family’s finances.

Graham wasn’t even born under Callaghan’s catastrophic Government. But he clearly draws from his own experiences growing up in Nottinghamshire to capture northern working-class life perfectly: the excitement over Christmas dinners, lazy Sunday’s sitting around in cramped living rooms, common phrases like “Any road” and a deep-seated patriarchialism which made women powerless and sons fearful of standing up to their fathers.

What is very clever is his ability to illustrate the absurd outlook of many working-class men: a visceral anti-Toryism coupled with a pride in looking after ones family and a hatred of getting help from the state. Granddad cracks cheesy jokes. He is touchingly oversentimental and romantic to his wife. Jim and Brenda have moments of intimacy. And Jim stops being anxious at the end of act one, let’s go, and praises his son for his artistic talents. Soppy, yes, but exactly what is needed to bring some warmth to a play focussing on rather difficult, miserable circumstances.

What is good, however, is that these fun and games do not serve a typical leftist agenda of putting a shine on working-class life before Thatcher. All is not so rosy. The extremely gripping scene at the end of the play, Eastenders-style fighting erupting between the men after Jim finally tells his dad that Mam has to go to hospital and he will go back to work, is a stark reminder of this.

Graham gives us a more balanced picture of life in this period: the sadness and frustration felt by many as social changes tore their communities apart, but also some of the advantages that came from the erosion of traditional working-class values. The beginning of the end for patriarchalism, for example. The juxtaposition between frail mam and opinionated Brenda indicates the start of the gradual empowerment of women. Decisions are made jointly in Jim and Brenda’s marriage whereas Granddad firmly remains “the head of the household”.

The opportunity to engage in further education as opposed to a default preference for manual labour is also a welcome change. It is moving to see Mark share his knowledge for reading, frustrating to see his dad dismiss it and, worse still, his Granddad burn his books. Perhaps the most significant change celebrated by Graham is the movement towards individual expression- represented best by Mark’s love of punk rock and his ambiguous sexual identity- away from conformity to the collective mass- represented by Granddad’s instance that not some but all workers, from truckers to nurses, strike.

After the final furore, Mark has an electric shock. The next scene is a funeral, and the audience are left pondering whether Mark or Mam is dead. When we find out Mark is alive, there is a real sense that the past is buried and the future will be brighter. Indeed, what is in store for the future is the further empowerment of women, mass education and individual expression.

Of course, Margaret Thatcher is the future too. Graham really is challenging the status quo in theatre land, asking the audience to ponder whether Maggie was really that bad for the working classes after all.

Sons of York continues at the Finborough Theatre, London SW10