Onawa Skinner talks to actor Joe Thomas about his upcoming role in the comedy What's In A Name?
Most readers will recognise Joe Thomas as the hapless, spiky-haired teenager in the cult series The Inbetweeners, which reached astronomical heights of success and spawned two feature films. More recently, Joe, 35, has starred in the BBC production White Gold, as well as comedy film The Festival (2018).
Now, he will swap film sets for the theatre limelight, as he heads on the UK tour of What's In A Name?, directed and adapted by Jeremy Sams from the internationally acclaimed French play Le Prènom. This adaption will substitute the bohemian suburbs of Paris for Peckham, as the play zooms in on a family dinner party hosted by pseudo-intellectual professor Peter (Bo Poraj) and his accommodating wife Elizabeth (Laura Patch). When, Elizabeth's cocky brother Vincent (Joe Thomas) and his pregnant girlfriend Anna (Summer Strallen) turn up to the house, along with childhood friend Carl (Alex Gaumond), the party quickly takes a turn for the worse as it is revealed that Vincent has opted for the name Adolphe, after the eponymous Benjamin Constant novel, for his unborn son. While the argument, at first, centres around whether Vincent should call his child a name instantly connected with an infamous German dictator, it fast becomes about everything and anything as deep-held resentments and insecurities surge to the surface.
When asked about what he thinks makes this world-renowned production so universally enjoyable, Joe offers: "It [the play] is about all the ways in which we worry that other people are better than us or have achieved more in their lives than we have. And conversely, maybe we think we are better than them and they should be more respectful towards us; that is pretty universal [...] and I should say it is very funny, it genuinely is a very funny script."
It is true, the read-through did have the audience cackling with laughter as events on stage became ever more absurd and heated. It seems that part of the attraction is that it allows viewers to ruefully reminisce about their own disastrous family gatherings...
"I mean I have been at family dinners where people have literally stormed off, I won't go into details but they begin so innocuously and it's just the fact that everyone stays there and everyone keeps drinking...it's almost like, well I don't know how else it was going to end!", Joe chuckles.
The appeal of this production also comes from the cultural references injected into the action, with topics ranging from Brexit to feminism in our post-Weinstein world. Then, of course, there is the more farcical subject of the increasingly bizarre names hipster couples are burdening their children with; Elizabeth and Peter have gone for Gooseberry and Apollinaire, which are decisions surely reached under the influence of gas and air.
"There are all sorts of [names] where people have told me them and I’ve thought that’s terrible… but I’ve never said it. [...] My friends are actually now having babies, so it’s just two thumbs up the whole time."
Fortunately, in What’s In A Name? the characters are less afraid to step on the toes of their loved ones, which brings the audience a hilarious hour and a half of bitter bickering that verges on the ridiculous.
What's In A Name runs at Guildford's Yvonne Arnaud Theatre 5-14 September and at Richmond Theatre 12-16 November. Book tickets here.
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