Royal & Derngate has never been shy of ambition, but with Top Gs Like Me it has taken a conspicuous swing. Samson Hawkins’ world premiere, staged as part of the theatre’s Made in Northampton programme, turns the Derngate auditorium into a skatepark and invites its audience to sit inside the circuitry of contemporary masculinity.
Hawkins, a Northamptonshire playwright whose previous work includes Village Idiot, sets his sights on the influence economy and the subtle mechanics of online radicalisation. Under the direction of Artistic Director Jesse Jones, the production asks how language, repeated often enough and delivered with enough swagger, begins to harden into belief. The question is not simply what young men are thinking, but how they come to think it.
At the centre is Aidan, played by Daniel Rainford, a young man navigating insecurity, status anxiety and the promise of quick success. He is impressionable without being stupid, vulnerable without being saintly. Rainford captures the twitchy uncertainty of someone caught between the desire to belong and the desire to dominate.
Opposite him stands Hugo Bang, portrayed with unnerving composure by Danny Hatchard. Hugo is an influencer figure whose confidence feels both aspirational and faintly corrosive. He offers clarity in a world that feels chaotic. The danger is not bombast but charm. The play’s most interesting passages lie in charting the small shifts of tone and allegiance through which an idea gains traction.
Jones has staged the action with the audience wrapped around ramps and platforms, collapsing the distance between spectator and subject. It is not an ornamental conceit. The proximity sharpens the stakes. When arguments flare, we are close enough to feel implicated. The immersive design, by Rebecca Brower, gives the piece a restless physicality that suits its subject. Levels become metaphors for power. The higher the ground, the louder the voice.
A striking device is the presence of an onstage “internet ensemble”, formed by third year Acting students from the University of Northampton. They function as a collective presence, amplifying, echoing and occasionally overwhelming the central characters. Through movement and sound, they suggest the invisible algorithm made flesh: responsive, seductive and relentless.
The play is described as a biting new comedy, and there is humour here, often sharp and well observed. Yet it is a humour edged with unease. Hawkins is clearly interested in masculinity not as a slogan but as a contested space. Empathy and vulnerability are presented as strengths, yet they are precisely the qualities his young men find hardest to inhabit. Money, status and the pressure to appear successful loom large.
If the writing occasionally edges towards explicit statement, it is redeemed by its refusal to offer neat judgement. Aidan is not simply condemned, nor is he easily absolved. The tension between accountability and the possibility of change gives the evening its moral weight.
This is a bold piece of programming for Royal & Derngate: a local writer on the main stage, tackling a subject that sits uncomfortably close to current headlines. It does not pretend theatre can solve the problem. Instead, it creates a space in which the conversation can begin.
Top Gs Like Me runs at Royal & Derngate, Northampton until Saturday 7 March. For performance times and ticket availability, contact the Box Office on 01604 624811 or visit www.royalandderngate.co.uk.
Main image: Daniel Rainford in Top Gs Like Me at Royal & Derngate, Northampton. Photo by Manuel Harlan.
