Written by James Graham. Presented by JB Theatre Co. The Old Fitz Theatre. 21 Sep – 2 Oct, 2026.
How can you make tax time fun? You know, tax time! Yay! One of Britain’s most celebrated playwrights, James Graham, is giving it a shot with The Man. Ben (Mike Howlett), a British bloke, sits down to do his tax return, his last year reduced to a pile of receipts. As he works out what he can claim back from HMRC and what he can’t, he takes us on a trip down memory lane through an eventful time in his life.
On entering the theatre, every audience member is handed a receipt, with instructions to give it to Ben when he walks around the auditorium asking for them. Each receipt sparks a different story, a mini-monologue about his year. Howlett has no idea which receipt will arrive next, and the audience soon discovers that the threads of Ben’s life reach us in a random order. It’s a fun conceit that gives the night a sense of play.
Ben’s stories cover the start (and end) of romantic relationships, his twin brother’s medical condition, and silly anecdotes about coffee. Slowly, a picture forms of a man in a big city, feeling a bit alone. His efforts to start a new business are harder than he expected, and his relationships are sometimes strained.
Exposition is a funny thing. We often judge writing on how well it delivers necessary plot information without boring us. Opening voice-overs are usually pretty bad, and clunky pauses to spit out techno-babble are usually dull. Yet there’s a simple mathematics to storytelling that says you need backstory to explain the importance of events. Graham’s play suggests the order is irrelevant?
The remarkable thing about The Man is how little the order of its revelations changes its emotional impact. Hear about Ben’s breakup with his girlfriend before the story of how they met, or after, and the news lands just as hard. Either order gives the facts a different flavour, sweet or sadly bittersweet, but the end result is more or less the same.
Ben’s receipts prompt some musical interludes (ah, remember iTunes?), and every so often he calls an HMRC help line, striking up an ongoing conversation with Lisa (Claudia Leon) in Wrexham, a friendly and understanding presence on the other end of the line. Those calls give the play a subtle shape and an overarching story.
At its core, The Man is almost a therapy session, with the audience standing in for the quiet, attentive therapist, listening for the repeated themes and the little things Ben is fixated on to find the deeper truth behind his purchases. The stories may seem to ramble, but they are slowly filling in a much larger picture. It’s a surprisingly elegant piece of storytelling that relies almost entirely on Howlett’s ability to engage and hold the audience, which he does with ease.
The Man premiered in 2010 and is an early work by Graham, and it has the energy of a young creative playing with form and pushing at boundaries. Two years later, his play This House would premiere at the National Theatre and push him into the top ranks of contemporary British playwrights and screenwriters. His new film Ink, based on his own play, is due out soon, directed by Danny Boyle.
The Man is a playful experiment with theatrical form that pays off. Oh, and I should point out that this review can, like the play, be read in any order. Apart from the first and last paragraphs, you can shuffle the others as you like. Did that alter your impression of the play or the review? I’m going to guess not as much as you thought…
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