Brexitland’s Emerging Identities in Clint Dyer and Roy Williams’s Death of England Trilogy

This article examines the intersection of political identities and cultural conflicts in the post-Brexit United Kingdom through Roy Williams and Clint Dyer’s Death of England trilogy. It examines how individuals in the United Kingdom, already marked by deep identity divisions, confront identity, belonging and nationalism, and how they redefine these concepts in a changing socio-political context. The first play in the trilogy, Death of England, is about Michael coming to terms with his father Alan’s nationalist and xenophobic views. The play explores how Brexit has exposed individual and generational tensions and addresses identity crises on a personal level. The second play, Death of England: Delroy, shifts the narrative to the perspective of a Black British character, examining Delroy’s vote to leave the European Union despite his marginalisation. This conflict reveals how race, immigration and class dynamics are intertwined with nationalist discourses. Death of England: Closing Time, on the other hand, critiques the gendered dimension of national identity politics by focusing on the perspectives of female characters Carly and Denise. Drawing on Soboleska and Ford’s (2020) concept of Brexitland, which also gives its title to the book, the article discusses how Brexit has pushed traditional economic class conflicts into the background and brought identity-based divisions to the forefront. As a result, the plays bring the emotional and ideological fractures created by Brexit to the stage, demonstrating that theatre is a critical tool for understanding this transformation.