‘People like Connor are still left to die in squalor’: the truth, joy and tragedy behind Laughing Boy

A decade after her autistic son Connor Sparrowhawk died in a specialist NHS facility, Sara Ryan’s campaign to reveal the truth about what happened is coming to the stage.

In a bare rehearsal space near Southwark tube station, south London, 11 people are in the process of forming a circle, ready for a read-through of a& new play. On the top of a& nearby piano is a small mountain of& tea, coffee and biscuits; for two or three minutes, everything is drowned out by the wheezing and groaning of a& very loud kettle. The mood is upbeat and energetic; everyone here seems to be happily immersed in the strange magic of turning the script resting on their laps into something full of life.

It is quite a job. The play in question, Laughing Boy, encompasses both everyday joy and the most awful kind of sadness: some of it is about life at its most intense, but its defining event is a senseless and unimaginably tragic death. It also pulls off the rare achievement of being political – at least with a small “p” – but also full of& human emotion. The preamble to the script speaks volumes: “It’s a terrible story,” it says, “but it must be& performed with optimism, laughter, satire and energy.”