Dad reckoning

A new play, Fatherland, contemplates the paternal patterns of Englishmen

Forget all the classic father-son activities: tepid pies and don’t-tell-your-mother swearing at the football match, fishing for shopping trolleys in the local canal, tinkering with the fan belt (is that the fan belt?) in the garage; a new piece of work from playwright Simon Stephens (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time), Frantic Assembly’s Scott Graham and Underworld’s Karl Hyde provides a fresh arena for paternal-filial feeling suppression: the theatre!

Fatherland, which premieres this month at the Manchester International Festival and features a 13-strong cast, is based on conversations with fathers and sons from the creators’ hometowns — Stockport, Corby and Kidderminster respectively — and contemplates what it means to be a progenitor of males in England then and now. Which should give you both plenty to contemplate and not talk about afterwards.

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Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, 1–22 July; mif.co.uk