Bonding ★★★

Interest in the Bond franchise may ebb and flow, but 007 has always proved a popular hook at the Fringe in Connery’s native Scotland. Similarly, Edinburgh has always boasted more difficult parent-child dramas than you can shake an Oedipal-shaped stick at. But rarely, if ever, has the Venn Diagram of these two interests overlapped much…

…until now. Bonding (a title with ingenious double meaning) is a solo show which takes the form of a conversational voyage through the 60 years plus of the James Bond franchise but also a personal journey tracing the relationship between one man and his father.

Bonding starts with the performer aping the iconic Bond movie opening, assuming the 007 pose in a spotlight, before delivering “The name’s Lewis, Stephen Lewis”. This actor, with a single TV credit in Midsomer Murders to his name, is played by the show’s writer, Cyril Blake.

When he chats to the audience conducting a survey as to ascertain who is their favourite of the six Bonds, it’s a fun start – the comparison of “the interloper” George Lazenby to a certain British politician gets a big laugh – but it also gives the (misleading) impression that the story which follows is the performer’s rather than that of the character he has constructed.

He tells us, from the off, he and his father had different lives: his Dad being a car mechanic “who never went south of Doncaster” and he not being the son his father had hoped for. But the two share an enjoyment of the Bond films, and going to the cinema to see the latest movie together becomes a tradition.

Blake begins to weave the history of the movies in and out of his account of his filial relationship. So in the 1960s, his father is unreconstructed, very much a man’s man – like Sean Connery – where problematic attitides (Connery’s Japanese fisherman in You Only Live Twice is rightfully mocked) are somewhat excused given the context of the time in which they were made.

Amid Blake’s bonhomie and (laughable) Bond impersonations, the nature of how the films and their central character changed to fit their times is a rich seam. Lazenby’s emotional weakness being punished, Dalton’s overcompensating, Craig’s isolated figure unexpected gaining family are fascinating in themselves but would be a Ted Talk were they not dramatised by Stephen’s growing understanding of his father and them beginning to… well, the title is the giveaway.

While the script smartly questions what it is to be a man and challenges old notions of masculinity in a manner akin to how the Bond franchise has evolved, there are moments which feel a little too neat emotionally. As Bonding is purportedly a character’s fictional story rather than something directly autobiographical, the heart strings are tugged perhaps too deliberately for some tastes.

Unquestionably, Blake’s performance is at its most convincing in the scenes of loss and grief – and overall Bonding is an entertaining hour whose mission, to deploy Britain’s most iconic secret agent as both mirror and metaphor, succeeds. And certainly Bond aficionados will enjoy casting their Goldeneye over this very different piece of theatre.