Auckland Arts Festival: A voyage around my father

Mark Thomas did a deal with the Royal Opera House. Photo / Idil Sukin

British comedian Mark Thomas had a difficult relationship with his builder dad but they made a connection through opera. Stephen Jewell talks to him about his emotional homage to his father.

Known for his political activism and satirical comedy, you wouldn't normally associate Mark Thomas with a rarefied art form such as opera. First performed at the Edinburgh Festival in 2012, Bravo Figaro! centres on the Clapham-born comedian's troubled relationship with his late father, Colin Alec Todd Thomas. He admits that it could have been about "football, stone circles or trainspotting". The one-man show started out as a commission from film director Mike Figgis, who was curating a contemporary arts festival at London's Royal Opera House.

"It really came about completely by accident but it's a thrill they did it," says Thomas. "They paid us and I earned a bit of money out of it, so we did okay. But then I discovered I had this great story, so I went away and worked on it. It was really exciting at the time but I don't think I realised how lucky I was because it's not something that happens every day. It's really by chance we've done this show."

But before he would agree to their request, Thomas asked the Royal Opera House if they would stage a special intimate concert at his parents' house in Bournemouth. "I asked if they would lend me some opera singers as part of the deal. I would take them down to my dad, who was really ill at the time as he'd got dementia and all kinds of stuff."

Colin Thomas was a builder and one-time lay preacher whose passion for opera seemingly ran counter to his uncompromising and sometimes violent reputation.

"My dad's taste in opera was fairly conservative as he loved all the big weepies by people like Rossini, Verdi and Puccini," says Thomas. "But as a teenager I hated it and thought it was dreadful and embarrassing because I wanted to break out from under his and my family's influence. It was only when he became ill that I found myself listening to it by accident."

Originally rebelling from his strict, conservative values, Thomas has found himself almost turning into his father as he has grown older. "My dad and I certainly had our ups and downs," he says. "But it's funny when you look back and think, 'I've taken this bit from him' or 'I'm like him in this way.' It's these little traits that we pick up and the whole gig should be about where you succeeded and where you've failed. You take the good bits so unfortunately you have to take the bad bits as well."

Believing himself to "occupy this weird space between stand-up, theatre and journalism", Thomas was initially reluctant to describe Bravo Figaro! as a play.

"There's a narrative and an emotional content to it, as well as a theme and an idea behind it," he says, noting how the musician Robert Wyatt refers to himself as "an amateur musician".

"I identify with that but don't get me wrong, it's not out of any sort of faux humility. It's like I do this stuff and I create these worlds. I'm aware they're mine and no one else's. Other people do proper plays or proper comedies and I do these weird little things, but I'm very happy with that. But if anyone calls it art, there are a whole set of expectations and preconceptions that come with that. So for ages, I wouldn't call it a play and it's only in the last year that I've done so, because it is a play. In fact, somebody contacted me the other week and asked if I owned the rights as they wanted to perform it, which I suppose is what people do with plays."

With his parents represented on stage by photographs and audio recordings, Bravo Figaro! seemed even more poignant after Colin Thomas died in April 2013. "We did three shows just after he died and it was really hard because it was right in the aftermath of it, so I was like a grieving maelstrom," says Thomas. "Poor old Tina, who is my tour technician so she does the lights and sound, said, 'I couldn't rely on anything you were saying and stuff was just coming out of your mouth, so I had to watch where you were moving for the cues.' They were really emotionally charged shows and at the end of it, I thought that was that and it's time to move away from this and do something new."

But now Thomas is reviving Bravo Figaro! for March's Auckland Arts Festival, embarking on a short warm-up tour of English regional centres before travelling to New Zealand. "This is us getting it ready to go to New Zealand," he says. "We're unpacking it and looking at it again to see what's changed because obviously things do change. Remarkably, lots of it hasn't changed, although there's a few bits that have, which are to do with the process of grieving and how you look back on that event."

Auckland Arts Festival

What:

Bravo Figaro! by Mark Thomas

Where and when: Q Theatre, March 16-22