A discomforting looking-glass into the soul of America, Pulitzer prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks’ play explores how one man can ruin multiple lives across generations when his insecurities are left to fester.

Written in 2010 during the Obama presidency, Suzan-Lori Parks’ play captures America at a time where anxieties surrounding immigration was mingled with its long-documented history of racial tension. And within a British context, where all the political talk is dominated by ‘stop the boats’, this feels very relevant here.

There is a sense of peril that is cultivated by Peter De Jersey’s Vet, a man whose hatred of immigrants is matched only by his love for his job and his vision of a sepia-toned America that never existed. The heady mix of nostalgia and repressed emotion is aided by Simon McCorry’s sound. In one telling moment, Jimi Hendrix’s All Along the Watchtower is playing out of the house radio, an anthemic song reduced in this tiny setting; as a metaphor for Vet’s version of America, it is perfect.

Vet’s corrosive world view is most fully realised in his son, Buddy (Francis-Swaby), who struggles throughout to contain his molten rage for acts in the past so heinous, he struggles to describe them. His decision to rename himself Snake (his father’s old moniker) feels like an Oedipal moment, an ever-present reminder that hurt people can hurt people. Francis-Swaby brings a rugged tenderness to the role, a frightened child in a grown man’s body.

Tension binds this play. It’s present in director Femi Elufowoju Jr’s staging, with metal poles cutting across the living room, adorned with razor wire and the ruins of an American flag. You feel it in David Howe’s lighting, where his liberal use of reds creates a feeling of morbidity. So too is it in the conversations Grace (Vincent) and Buddy have with Vet, where their words tread lightly, as if fearful to disturb the boiling subtext. For a work that feels so stained in violence, it is only in the denouement that it explodes; before the explosion though, it is certainly hinted at. One moment has Vet choosing to use pornography to try to bond with Buddy. Shocking as it is, it illustrates that Vet views the world through a power binary: those with power are worthy of power whilst those without are dismissed.

This tautness is excruciating, made more so by Vincent’s performance as Grace. She is southern hospitality made manifest, imbued with an infectious positivity (through the eponymous scrapbook she collects uplifting stories in) that never fully manages to conceal the wariness she has in Vet’s presence. The Book of Grace offers a portrait of America that is at once ugly, hopeful and moribund. Whilst not enjoyable, it is certainly riveting – a bold statement that macro and micro are connected.

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