Theatre review: Cherry Docs, by David Gow, London

Sorry, but Canadian skinheads aren’t scary. Not in north London, anyway. Within a bottle’s throw of the King’s Head Theatre in Islington, real legal aid lawyers deal every week with tattooed, cigarette-smoking, bovver-boot-wearing neo-Nazis – and that’s just at dinner parties. Criminal clients as articulate, intelligent and, yes, sympathetic as David Gow’s racist thug banged up awaiting trial in Toronto are the stuff of dreams. Over in Canada it’s different, apparently. Publicly funded solicitors can devote months to preparing the defence case of a single violent client, and have spouses who end up surprised and upset when they bring their work home. And a plotline of an unlikely relationship developing between a liberal defence lawyer and an illiberal client is a novelty.

Fortunately for London, a hard-working two-man cast and the unbeatable intimacy of the refurbished King’s Head make for a good evening. David Lyons (pictured) is vein-poppingly angry as skinhead Mike. We don’t get to see the Cherry Docs (Doc Martens) of the title, but according to fashion gurus they’re coming back into style. Soon every legal aid solicitor in Islington will be sporting them.

  • Cherry Docs by David Gow is on at the King’s Head Theatre, London, until 19 October. For tickets, contact the box office: 0844 412 2953