Support our Nation today - please donate here
Culture

Theatre Review: Port Talbot Gotta Banksy

11 May 2025 6 minute read
Holly Carpenter, Matthew Bulgo, Kerry Joy Stewart (in pink), Simon Nehan & Ioan Hefin. Photo by Kirsten McTernan

Molly Stubbs

In December 2018, prolific street artist Banksy gave the people of Port Talbot a very singular Christmas gift. 

‘Seasons Greetings’, originally painted on the side of steelworker Ian Lewis’s garage, depicts a delighted child wrapped in cosy winter clothes catching snowflakes on his tongue. Only on walking around the garage does it become clear that those snowflakes are in fact ash from a dustbin fire. 

Twenty thousand visitors saw the artwork in its first month. It was hoped that hundreds of thousands more would see it permanently exhibited in the town centre. But, of course, that’s not quite how the tale unfolded. 

Having gathered 150 hours of interviews with individuals in the town, writers Paul Jenkins and Tracy Harris edited together the thoughts and opinions of residents into a theatre production, featuring verbatim dialogue from those very interviews. Port Talbot Gotta Banksy is the story of the Port Talbot Banksy, in the words of those to whom it belonged. 

Documentary

Since the play is, for all intents and purposes, a documentary, the cast of Port Talbot Gotta Banksy were tasked not with embodying characters but acting as conduits for the interviewees’ voices. 

Where perfect enunciation might be prioritised in most plays, here stutters, stammers, coughs, and incorrect pronunciations preserved the simultaneously humorous and harsh reality of the Port Talbot Banksy captured in those original interviews. The play makes clear by including snippets of those interviews just how closely the cast have emulated the cadence of their ‘characters’. 

Matthew Bulgo, Ioan Hefin, Holly Carpenter (in orange), Kerry Joy Stewart, Jalisa Phoenix-Roberts & Simon Nehan. Photo by Kirsten McTernan

Each of the six actors involved (Matthew Bulgo, Holly Carpenter, Ioan Hefin, Simon Nehan, Jalisa Pheonix-Roberts, Kerry Joy-Stewart) took on multiple roles, switching between them literally at the drop of a hat or scarf or bouncer’s vest or Marie Curie apron. So seamless were these transitions that, at points, I needed a few seconds to work out whether there had suddenly been two or three extra people added to the cast. 

It’s also down to lighting design by Cara Hood, costumes by Fenna de Jonge, and a set by Cai Dyfan that blurred the lines between backstage and stage that the audience’s eyes never drift from the character currently speaking. Even so, the important feeling that not a single word of Port Talbot Gotta Banksy is fiction is ever-present. 

Artwork

It probably won’t surprise you to learn that Port Talbot Gotta Banksy isn’t just about the artwork. There are certainly points made about the thin line between street art and graffiti, the validity of differing interpretations of art, and who ultimately ‘owns’ it. 

But by far the most emotional moments are those that ask the audience to consider the larger issues facing Port Talbot. That it’s written off by most people as a sulphurous, industrial, pitiable place that offers absolutely no reason to visit to those not born or currently living there. That the only thing Port Talbot residents have is a steelworks that dirties their windows and cars and clothes, seizes their very breath, but employs their fathers, sons, and brothers. That these people, at the time most of the interviews were gathered, are effectively in an abusive relationship with blast furnaces – hating the physical effects, but terrified their abuser will leave. 

It’s almost as if Banksy might have been making some kind of point. 

Jalisa Phoenix-Roberts, Simon Nehan & Matthew Bulgo. Photo by Kirsten McTernan

In the case of Port Talbot Gotta Banksy, the writers have acted more as editors, ordering the thoughts and feelings of their interviewees into a story. And I think they’ve done it masterfully. Every opinion has an equal and an opposite, and they’re staged to make it very clear what those are. The most effective was, with Ioan Hefin’s steelworker and Matthew Bulgo’s local counsellor standing side-by side, the argument between having hope for Port Talbot’s future when many people are still very much struggling in the present. 

The staging, pacing, movement by Lucy Cullingford, and video from Andy Pike and Ethan Lloyd combine to create a performance the content and themes of which it’s almost impossible not to engage with. 

Did I shed a tear at the end for the people who are going to have to spend the next 50 years doing what those in my home town, Pontypridd, have been forced to do since the mines closed? Yes. 

Truth

The truth is, though, that watching Port Talbot Gotta Banksy left something of a sour taste in my mouth. I don’t believe this is the fault of the writers or the production staff or the actors, who did an admirable job, but of the audience with whom I watched the play. 

As mentioned, the cast acted as conduits for the voices of real individuals. On many occasions, these individuals cracked jokes for their interviewers, made light of their situations, were genuinely funny. Forgive the obvious bias, but no one else can do humour quite like the Welsh. 

However, on other occasions, the actors were simply speaking as their ‘characters’ had spoken in interviews, and those moments seemed to get as many laughs as all the rest. Mispronunciations were made fun of, drunkards became court jesters for journos. It felt like a very raw example of classism. There, I said it. 

It rubbed me the wrong way, although it did subside during some of the more obvious pathos in the second act. But my husband, born and raised in Port Talbot, leaned over in the interval to express his discomfort, to the point where he didn’t think he could watch the rest. On stage were his parents and grandparents and childhood friends, all getting laughed at as well as with. 

Ioan Hefin. Photo by Kirsten McTernan

I think, in many ways, Port Talbot Gotta Banksy’s greatest strength, that it is very much non-fictional, is also its greatest weakness because, like the Banksy, it belongs to no one other than the residents of Port Talbot. 

I highly recommend you see the play as where else are you going to get such a vital insight into this incredibly niche chapter of Welsh history? But I humbly ask that you have just a modicum of respect for the individuals whose thoughts you’re seeing staged. 

Take a moment to listen because the only other person who ever has is a Bristolian street artist with no name, the work of whom now resides in an ‘undisclosed location’ in England. 

 

Port Talbot Gotta Banksy ran at the Sherman Theatre 2-10 May 2025, and will be showing at the Plaza, Port Talbot on 15, 16, and 17 May; Torch Theatre, Milford Haven on 20 May; Grand Theatre, Swansea on 22 May and Tŷ Pawb, Wrexham on 24 May.


Support our Nation today

For the price of a cup of coffee a month you can help us create an independent, not-for-profit, national news service for the people of Wales, by the people of Wales.

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

0 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

Our Supporters

All information provided to Nation.Cymru will be handled sensitively and within the boundaries of the Data Protection Act 2018.