Flour power… Self-Raising, Soho Theatre

They should make you sign an NDA before entering the Soho Theatre to watch this play. The questions of who dunnit, what it was and when it happened are all vital to the narrative hold of Jenny Sealey’s one-woman-one-‘terp-one-son-play that it would be a crime to report them. It’s out duty as an audience to make sure Jenny can tell her secrets and in her way: it’s one of the most intricate and, yes, engaging plays I’ve seen for some time and it’s already my feelgood hit of 2024!

Jenny begins by removing the fourth wall and she will gradually break down every barrier to the truth between the audience and herself. She introduces herself and explains that she is deaf then Jeni Draper, her ‘terp or interpreter, whose job it is to be Jenny, at least in terms of sign language, then we get to meet her son Jonah – who, like Jenny’s father, is a photographer and a smart one at that, providing captioning and video design along with witty audio contributions, like mother like son.

Jenny is an award -winning Artistic Director of the disabled-led theatre company, Graeae, and just when you might expect this play to be about her condition you are swiftly disabused. Jenny went deaf aged seven after an accident playing with a pal, but she explains how her mother, especially decided to bring her up “hearing” so much so that she can “pass” for hearing even though she is fully at terms with what must once have been a traumatic experience. Such is Jenny’s obvious sense of character and resolution: but let nothing detract from the exceptional job she has done presenting a story with a completely different focus from her lived experience. Self-Raising is about family and it's about truth and lies that we all have, and which we hold tightly to ourselves pretty much like bags of flour.

Jeni Draper and Jenny Sealey. All photos by Tiu Makkonen

Yes, what exactly is it about the flour, and why does it have to be self-raising? The answers will come, but only when Jenny is ready, firstly she explains how her play was going to be about Anne Fine’s schoolbook Flour Babies… The story concerns a class of “underachievers” who are given bags of flour which they have to carry for three weeks and treat like babies. It’s providing a lesson in responsibility and also encouraging pupils to think about the role of their parents. As she explains, Jenny hands out bags of flour to members of the audience in front rows, each one has a name and like schoolchildren we’re not entirely sure why.

The original plan was abandoned when certain family secrets came to light in ways that meant Jenny had to write her way through it and as we see, perform her explanation. It’s bold and it’s brave and utterly compelling as she and her ‘terp and her son on AV, take us through the family history, from Jenny’s growing up in Nottingham to her father Bob’s photographic company, Tempest Photography – still a going concern by the way – which is appropriately the name of Jenny’s favourite Shakespeare.

The set doubles as a storage area – for flower, family photos and memorabilia – and a dark room in which some of the blackest secrets can, literally, be exposed. As Jenny talks us through her parents, her sisters and her friends, their pictures appear on the screen above where she attaches them – each one with commentary from Jenny and or Jonah and, of course Jeni.

Sealey strikes an extraordinary intimacy with her audience through her open-hearted discourse and unaffected stage presence. It’s easy to forget that this is her life or that she is acting… fore by the end you feel she has taken us into her confidence and also soften the blows her revelations might otherwise cause. Sealey on stage creates a safe space throughout the auditorium even if for the first few rows at least, there’s the possibility you may have to hold a bag of flour for the duration.

Jenny Sealey holds the audience in her hands. Photo by Tiu Makkonen

IThankYou Theatre rating: ***** A reversed engineered delight, Jenny Sealey has worked backward from a series of explosive and emotional revelations to create a linear masterpiece that pulls you into the most honest and warm-hearted description of "family" you'll find on any stage in London. Wholeheartedly recommended!

Written by Sealey with Mike Kenny and tightly directed by Lee Lyford Self-Raising is absolutely the Theatre of Truth and Trust, it’s an uplifting cathartic experience that makes us question why we keep secrets and which ones to share with our nearest and dearest.

The Self-Raising tour continues across the UK until the end of March and you should book as soon as possible using the links below:

6 – 17 February, London Soho Theatre                                                                  

20 – 21 February, Scarborough, Stephen Joseph Theatre                                

22 – 23 February, Liverpool Everyman                                                       

29 February – 1 March, Derby Theatre                        

4 – 5 March, Newcastle Live Theatre                              

7 – 9 March, Colchester Mercury Theatre                                  

12 – 13 March, Warwick Arts Centre                            

14 March, Nottingham Playhouse                                                

19 – 20 March, Bristol Tobacco Factory                                

22 – 24 March, Leeds Playhouse                

Details of the Graeae Theatre Company are available on their website.

Anthem for doomed youth? Don’t Destroy Me, Arcola Theatre

Eddie Boyce and Nell Williams

All children whose parents have been busted up by war – never are the same. We’re a special breed.

Offie Award winning Two’s Company are known for restaging almost forgotten plays and in this case have revived Don’t Destroy Me by pioneering Jewish writer Michael Hastings written and first performed in 1956 and steeped in the post-war Jewish experience in ways that, sadly remain ever pertinent across the divides of faith and secular politics. This is the first time the play has been staged since.

One of the characters, a 17-year-old woman called Suki (Nell Williams, part of a very strong and experienced cast) keeps on insisting that there is a world outside the windows of the claustrophobic Brixton apartment block where the actions take place but you’d barely know it such is the pressure the older generations apply to their children and to each other. 

Almost everyone is still traumatised by the war a decade after it was finished and the full truth of its atrocities became known. Some bury themselves in routine or trust in the old faith whilst some self-medicate with excessive alcohol and there are those who have simply lost their minds. Troubled by his own upbringing and post-war disappointments, Hastings, was just 18 at the time he wrote this play, and, as William Burrows once said, tried to write himself out of it… There are no easy answers: it is a fiercely honest play and one that refuses to offer the audience the false comforts of a simple resolution.

Paul Rider, photo from Phil Gammon

Given the age of the playwright, it’s entirely fitting that young Eddie Boyce, makes their professional stage debut as Hastings Sammy and what a splendid job he makes of it too. Sammy is 15 and returning to his father Leo (Paul Rider) after growing up in Croydon with his aunt. Leo lives unhappily married to Shani (Natalie Barclay) who is just 29 (or possibly 31) and a generation younger. She married Leo out of convenience, a means to escape Hungary after the war whilst Leo wanted a “mother” for his son after his mother died. The two live in unhappy disharmony, sniping at each other as she relishes her leisure time and he drinks to forget the daytime and the disasters of the past.

But they are just two of the inmates in this odd tenement with a mentally disturbed mother, Mrs Pond (Alix Dunmore) living in the top flat with her daughter Suki with the two almost incapable of connecting. Mrs Pond lost her husband or lover near the end of the War and as her exasperated landlady and former best friend Mrs Miller (Sue Kelvin) says, words just won’t stick in her head and no conversation is ever run to neurotypical rules as Mrs Pond’s mind moves in and out of focus.

Completing the household is George (Timothy O’Hara) a happy-go-lucky bookie who is more than happy to make the most of his luck with Shani. He’s forever popping into his neighbour’s flat much to Leo’s chagrin who shoos him off and then goes for a "walk", straight to the pub.

Into this mix is added young Sammy whose addition to the family is quickly problematic as Leo cannot seem to communicate with him especially over his choice of boisterous jazz records. Shani has the opposite issue as, far nearer Sammi’s age but still a half-generation distant, she over communicates and smothers him with advice and good intentions. Trying to find his way Sammi asks for the local Rabbi (Nicholas Day) to visit and them events really do intensify as preparations are made, arguments are had and tea, cake and sandwiches prepared… The problem for Sammi – and Suki – is if the grown-ups are not only stuck in the past but unwilling to move on, what future can there be for them?

Eddie Boyce and Nicholas Day All shots by Phil Gammon. 

IThankYou Theatre Rating: ****

This is an outstanding debut play from Hastings and if it drifts from time to time over the two hours running time is swiftly gets back on track. As the youngest and possibly angriest of the emerging Angry Young Men – John Osborne was 27 at this point – the playwright has a lot of anger to express and is forcefully on point for the inability to escape the past, consolidate the now and work out a future that isn’t just a tribute act for the societal mores of a generation subsumed in conflict and loss.

Tricia Thorns directs with a forensic eye for period sensibilities and choreographs her players so well in the playing area created by Alex Marker’s inventive set design: they not only fit the interior of a Victorian townhouse into the Arcola stage, but make us all feel apart of it, almost embarrassed by the family truths and discomforts played out closely in front of us. 

Eddie Boyce is extraordinary in this position and it’s not understatement to say that he does not look out of place in this highly skilled and forceful set of players!

Don’t Destroy Me runs at the Arcola until 3rd February and I’d recommend you check out their website immediately for tickets and more information.

Eddie Boyce, Timothy O'Hara and Nathalie Barclay. Shot, Phil Gammon.

Alix Dunmore and Sue Kelvin. Photo Phil Gammon.

Childhood’s end… The Good John Proctor, Jermyn Street Theatre

I never thought you but a good man, John, only somewhat bewildered…

The Crucible by Arthur Miller

‘Tis the season for hunting witches, when is it ever not? Evil is everywhere, as the young women featured in Talene Monahon’s play keep on repeating and yet here it’s an obscure thing only dimly conceived in the minds of children in what amounts to a prequel to Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. Monahon’s script cleverly avoids all obvious allusions with only passing references made to modern witchery made in a discourse conducted in the modern idioms of a high school friends.

The characters are some of the women who make the fateful accusations in Miller’s play and they have been taken back to the actuality of their youth, Abigail Williams in The Crucible is 17 but here she’s played as 12 by the excellent Anna Fordham and her cousin and best friend Betty Parris, played with child-like nuance by Sabrina Wu, is just nine. This is the age they were when in 1692 they made their accusations against over two dozen of their fellow villagers in Salem including the good John Proctor.

The story takes place largely in the year before the witch trials and begins in the bedroom of the cousins as Betty relates a dream she’s had about flying through the woods, “like an owl” an exhilarating dream of freedom that her cousin advises her not to relate. Keeping a secret is difficult for a nine-year-old but Abigail knows already that accusations of witchcraft are all to easily made.

Sabrina Wu and Anna Fordham - all photographs by Jack Sain

Their friend Mercy Lewis (the vibrant Amber Sylvia Edwards) is 14 and knows all about the world including the fact that it is full of evil and, seemingly, large numbers of her fellow citizens are in congress with The Devil even though they still go to church the next day as if the rather florid descriptions of Old Nick worship she presents should leave them exhausted. Where has she learned all these lurid rumours? The play seems in no doubt about the corruption of these innocents. 

Abigail gets a job with the Proctor family much to her cousin’s despair - why are all the people we love dead or working? – and she becomes dazzled by her employer, as good a man as she has ever met. But her childish view of his benevolence soon gives us hints of a darker relationship that adds unwelcome depth to the evils of the original play. She has a child’s conception even of this though and either cannot nor will not express her treatment in direct terms. This is the skill of the playwright; understatements serve to highlight the sins of this new world were none stay innocent for long.

Sabrina Wu and Amber Sylvia Edwards, photo by Jack Sain

A new party arrives from Maine, and another without living parents – only Betty’s remain alive or present – Mary Warren (Lydia Larson) who at 18 has seen more of life as can be quickly seen. Lydia Larson is quite remarkable as the sensitive Mary giving the most febrile of performances, her eyes and face alive with meaning and the overwhelming wonder her character finds in the world in general and the woods in particular. Mary has fits when her imagination runs too wild but Lydia presents this lightning potential at all points, as thoughts flicker across her face in contrapuntal flow to her dialogue.

This is one of the wonders of the Jermyn Street Theatre, even with my eyesight you can see the performers at work and this breaks down the barriers you might find up in the expensive Gods of the West End giants round the corner. 

So, it is we see in close quarter how the girls’ exploitation and confusion leads to their seeking even the most outlandish explanations for their helplessness: what good is rationality when you are orphaned and abused. But the play lets us make our own minds up and doesn’t proscribe specific causality just the probabilities of society’s most vulnerable. The evil is throughout society and it is other people.

Anna Ryder's direction allows her performers free rein even as they are tightly choreographed across every inch of the stage.  The soundscaping from Bella Kear has a narrative atmosphere all its own and the lighting design from Laura Howard is superb transforming the JST’s discrete performance space from puritan loft to the deep disorientation of the woods and a quite astonishing moment when the focus shifts from stage to stalls.

Lydia Larson, detail from photo by Jack Sain

IThankYou Theatre Rating: ****

 This is a magical-realist, visceral delight that, literally, turns the spotlight on the audience in terms of our judgement and responsibility to these characters and young people like them. Who makes the “witches”, well, we do, and people very much like us if we’re not very careful. 

The play is being staged as part of the Jermyn Street Theatre’s Footprints Festival and runs from 10^th – 27th January, so I suggest you get your booking in quick. 

Full details of tickets and the rest of the Footprints productions are on the JST website.

I actually can’t believe how wicked this town has become.

Incidentally, my favourite performance of John Proctor came from Tom Wilkinson at the National Theatre in 1990. He was a powerful presence on stage and on screen and it is him I always think of when I think of The Crucible. RIP.

Circle of lives... The Arc: A Trilogy of New Jewish Plays, Soho Theatre

 

There are as many different ways to be Jewish as there are Jews in the world, and all of us have myriad stories to tell and ways of telling them. The Arc director, Kayla Feldman

On my way up the stairs in the Soho Theatre there’s a sign explaining that on this site stood the West End Great Synagogue from 1880 to 1996, “a sanctuary of friendship” and so there could be few better locations to present this world premiere of short plays by three of the UK’s leading Jewish playwrights exploring the great subjects from birth, marriage to death. No lack of ambition there then!

What does it mean to be of Jewish heritage in modern Britain? Is there a kind of complacent boredom in some quarters, as David Baddiel has said, that leads to an unconscious racism or is it more the failure of imagination and empathy as we may fall victim to categorical thinking and the idea of “sides” with collective values and purpose. Talking of which, what can I bring to the topic as a lapsed Methodist of Irish Catholic descent? Well, belief and heritage are one thing, but human experience is another and these three short plays are full to the brim with humanity and, whilst there are surely some that flew over my head, there are enough knowing winks to hit home.

As one of the young couple in the second play, literally a recurring nightmare of a first date going wrong time after time, asks why a shared genetic heritage makes them anymore likely to connect with the other then pointing out that everyone has a shared genetic heritage. It’s a minefield of course, but there’s also many centuries of cultural nurture versus nature and that’s what brings us together and divides us. These two are non-observant and when God/a man called Godfrey intervenes, with a clap of possibly coincidental thunder, they’re brought together by their differences. This is as it should be.

Caroline Gruber and Dorothea Myer-Bennett (all shots Danny With a Camera)

It all begins with Amy Rosenthal’s Birth, which is a skilful weaving together of a fiftieth wedding anniversary and unintended consequences of that wedding arriving in the form of Naomi (Dorothea Myer-Bennett) who may or may not have been induced so that over-worked gynaecologist Michael (Nigel Planer) could take a week off to honeymoon in Greece with his new bride, Linda (Caroline Gruber).

Naomi arrives from Clapham via a replacement bus service and Michael, unable to recall her mother, suggests she heads straight back. There’s something of The Inspector Calls about the visit as Naomi gradually reveals how therapy has made her feel somehow incomplete and unready for the world even at fifty yet she comes not to point the finger or commence legal action, her motivations are altogether subtler.

Michael is confounded by the younger generation’s need to self-examine, his “… it’s not as if you’ve got numbers on your arm…” feeling like a gut punch even said in jest by one of a different generation. The search for meaning transcends history and, just like the crossword he’s struggling with, can sometimes sneak up on you when you’re unprepared.

Rosenthal’s aim is to write joyful, punchy, unexpected plays that look unflinchingly at the Jewish experience but always through a lens of humour and hope - which I think is how we survive. She certainly succeeds here and is not alone.

Abigail Weinstock and Sam Thorpe-Spinks

Alexis Zegerman’s Marriage is next and begins with a flash of lightning as a young couple start and re-start their first date. Adrian (Sam Thorpe-Spinks) is a very nervy podiatrist from Edgeware who can’t help but say the wrong things to the sharper-edged Eva (Abigail Weinstock) including a schoolboy error about the causes of his RSI. After a number of false starts – would you Adrian an’ Eve it? – they settle into a stuttering pattern covering their motivations and cultural references, with Adrian’s Proust joke – “I thought you liked reading…” – rebounding as Eve slapping him round and over the head with acute Proustian observations.

An older man (Mr Planer again) has joined them in the restaurant and smiles at their struggle before finally revealing himself as the aforementioned God/Godfrey… he’s either the deity or finely tuned with the establishment’s faulty electrics but his intervention gives them something to react against and they break their silence. It’s deftly handled and very funny, “Jesus Christ!” says an exasperated Adrian, don’t get me started replies God or is it God-free?

Abigail Weinstock, Dan Wolff and Adrian Schiller

Ryan Craig’s Death is the final act and concerns the funeral of Golda Meir, a restless hamster who travelled far and who appears to die twice rather than the Ukrainian-born former prime minister of Israel. As with the first play’s “numbers” reference this is a joke only someone from the culture could make and, without question, humour is indeed part of our survival mechanism and a way of bringing people together around the commonality of a shared laugh.

Death is more concerned with other, more formalistic rituals as siblings Adam (Dan Wolff) and Leah (Abigail Weinstock) discuss their aunt’s funeral arrangements as per her wishes, even though she is only 76 and in good health. Leah is the elder and is trying to coach the reluctant Adam to follow instructions, he has the air of a man undermined by the responsibility of life and expectation overshadowed by his sister and their highly successful father Dan (Adrian Schiller).

We soon discover Adam’s struggle with grief for the passing of Golda, the rodent being a key connection with his daughter now living with his ex-wife. Adam has bought a small coffin although he hasn’t formalised plans yet and Golda’s body lies in state inside a supermarket plastic bag… as with the statements of the first play, he isn’t “ready”, not for any of it but perhaps there’s room for tradition still.

We’re played out by Carol King’s I Feel the Earth Move… a suitably upbeat needle-drop and one from a songwriter who always captures the broader human connections in her music. Carol is as defined by her creativity as her New York Jewish background yet the two are inseparable.

IThankYou Theatre Rating: **** The Arc is a breath of theatrical fresh air that entertains as well as it informs. Impeccably staged and directed by Kayla Feldman its cast effortlessly energised by the rich subject matter on display, I want more!

The Arc plays until Saturday 26th August 2023 so get in quick, ticket details are available from the Soho Theatre box office or via their website here.

Emanate Productions was founded in 2021, and the company focuses on nurturing talent in emerging and established artists of Jewish heritage, platforming urgent, exciting and passionate stories with an integral Jewish soul. The Arc is produced by the company’s Co-Artistic Directors, Sam Thorpe-Spinks and Dan Wolff along with Associate Producer Tanya Truman.

Killing us softly… Snowflakes, Park Theatre

Snowflakes is perhaps not the first play to use the idea of murder as an entertainment but it’s probably ahead of the game in following social media to its natural conclusion in this Age of Rage and our instant hot, takes of hate. Ever tried to establish a middle ground with someone you disagree with on Twitter, it’s almost impossible whether the subject is films, soccer or even something serious. Wrongdoers are a matter of opinion and not established facts because, Amber, Johnny not only has alternative facts but a social marketing budget of millions.

Snowflakes is funny, frightening and highly engaging, even more so than gazing at Twitter, Insta and Tik Tok for an hour and a half, which I’ve seen someone attempt in the front row of the Donmar until the performers intervened. There’s none of that in the packed house tonight because not only are the actors armed, they’re also killing us softly with their words like John Denver after a very bad experience at Centre Parks, of which more later…

Robert Boulton’s play has already been Offie-Nominated and you can understand why, it’s an audacious debut which dares to tackle its subject matter in a complex way with the debate largely mirrored by the trial by social media jury that is the centrepiece. For every attempt to trump the appeal of hyper-normalised misinformation there’s a response that points the finger at all of us leaving the question of how this will all stop especially for the generations now raised on the internet.

Boulton also takes the lead as Marcus, lead executioner of a start-up that specialises in capturing and interrogating individuals who may or may not have done something wrong but who having already been found guilty in the eyes of public opinion, now have to hope for the slim chance of talking their way out of being sentenced to death by an online audience with itchy trigger fingers. He got his big break after a notorious slaughter at Centre Parks which brought admiration and instant psychopathic stardom.

Louise Hoare and Robert Boulton (All photos from Jennifer Evans)

Along with rising star Sarah (Louise Hoare), Marcus captures writer and opinion maker Tony (Henry Davis) in a hotel room after he has just woken from a drunken night’s infidelity. Tony has been accused of sexual assault and whilst no charges have been brought and he continually denies it, he will have to mount a defence if he is to win over the already converted… who else would watch such a show.

It's Sarah’s first time and she’s inscrutably concerned about the details, much to Marcus’ disgust she hasn’t even decided what weapon she’ll use when push comes to slaughter. Louise Hoare presents Sarah almost as our witness to this extraordinary circus, she wants to make a difference but feels in neutral with a seeming objectivity which annoys Marcus. Boulton plays his man as almost likeable, he’s thoroughly persuaded of the importance and validity of his job and is far smarter than he lets on.

With Tony mostly unconscious for the first parts of the play the two characters feel each other out, Marcus ready to kill at any point and Sarah perhaps not fully reconciled to everything she’s going to have to do. They rouse Tony from his drugged stupor and the real debate begins as the camera is set up and his guilt or otherwise will be decided not so much by his honesty as his ability to appear convincing on screen.

Props to Henry Davis for his skill at feigning unconsciousness not just as we entered the theatre but also after being knocked out. His Tony is too clever for his own good and yet we are torn between his testimony and refusal to play the game and Marcus’ bloodied cynicism; he’s heard it all before and believes nothing.

Henry Davis and Louise Hoare (photos from Jennifer Evans)

But no one escapes the inquisition and all three will have to confront their own truth in a startlingly vivid final half. It’s a visceral treat in the close quarters intimacy of the Park with Mike Cottrell’s direction using every inch of the performance space as the characters move in relation to each other, the audience and our confused sympathies… there is no fourth wall left by the end.

There’s superb stage design from Alys Whitehead with a sparse set utilising Jonathan Chan’s lighting to shift focus and dynamics as the tension ebbs and flows. There’s also the most chilling of stage scraps, expertly directed by Bethan Clark, that had us shifting uncomfortably in our seats: this is not ambient box-ticking theatre, they mean it and it’s going to hurt.

IThankYou Theatre rating: **** We didn’t need a Twitter poll to decide on the play’s fate at the end as the ovation proved. This is not a play you’ll forget in a hurry especially as you turn on your mobile on the way home and it turns on you, the blue glow making you see red yet again. As Tony suggests it’s not about the politics anymore it’s about the personal and your very identity is under attack.

Snowflakes plays at the Park Theatre until 6th May 2023 full details are on their website, another fabulous show at one of the very finest independent theatres in London.

The skin game... Trade, Pleasance Theatre and on tour

This is a story told from inside out, a narrative swirled around a single character looking back from a pivotal moment as she explains herself to an audience close enough to see the whites of her eyes, the sick on her shirt, the blood on her trousers. There’s no place for the audience to hide in the Pleasance’s downstairs theatre and crammed in on three sides the audience were simply outnumbered and overwhelmed by the three players on stage as we looked into their eyes and saw only Sarajevo, Yugoslavia and the London nobody will admit to knowing.

 I didn’t know until I bought the book after the show that this was Katarina Novkovic’s professional stage debut, the second show of the week long run at the Pleasance… her second ever gig. She is so strikingly assured you’d never know it, switching the mood and holding the play together with forceful assurity, completely within character, pulling us into the moments. She is joined in this seemingly effortless alchemy by Eleanor Roberts who’d been in the play’s debut at Central St Martins and the run at last year’s Vault Festival, and Ojan Genc (recently seen in the excellent Slow Horses). Between them the three play many characters and create a dramatic experience that is both exhausting, humbling and, in parts, very funny.

 Yes, Trade is remarkably varied in tone for a play about human trafficking but as Katarina’s character, Jana, counts the tens, hundreds and thousands of days she’s been away from her home and family, she shows much resilient humanity and her jokes are not just about breaking the mood as adapting to horrendous circumstance and enabling her to survive. 

Katarina Novkovic (all photos from Ali Painter)

Written by Ella Dorman-Gajic, who is of Serbian and Austrian heritage, Trade is dedicated to a single story out of the millions around the world who are the victims of modern slavery and part of the play’s script sales goes to Unseen, a charity supporting such victims in the UK. The numbers in slavery are greater than at any point in history and estimates put over 100,000 people in this country in this position including many in forced sexual exploitation, 99% of which are women and girls who, in the cases of Jana and her sister Katarine (Eleanor), are of similar age to my daughter.

The play doesn’t take any easy routes to making its points though, this is a fierce entertainment that pulls you in and leaves you breathless by the end when Jana’s full journey is finally revealed. It’s not a binary world by any means and the worst of it is almost unmentioned as we focus on Jana’s head stretched to keep above the swirling depravity of her daily experience. 

The play opens with her every inch the “professional” as she later says, taking a call from some punter for one of the girls she helps manage. There’s a loud knock on the door and the police shouting through threats as she smiles us back to her teenage years working in the family grocers with her mother and younger sister. Jana is smart, almost fluent in English as she helps to tutor her sister. 

Katarina Novkovic and Ojan Genc

She meets a boy, Stefan (Ojan) who has come in looking for potatoes and the two bond over a cabbage, as you do. Their romance develops and the two plan to go to London, a place she has always dreamed of, plans are made and the two head off, Jana promising to see her sister soon. Once they reach Sarajevo, Jana soon discovers that everything is not at all as she was led to believe along with those of us who probably had too large a supper at the Depot Deli next door.

The moments of the first assault are horrifically quiet as the play lets our imaginations do the hard work as Jana’s bright white clothing is covered in a splash of deep red blood, she loses her virginity to the first of many men. It’s brutal and her casually resigned exposition only serves to underline how her life has been viciously removed from her control….

From there onto the UK via the sea, a gut punch given recent announcements, these are indeed some of our “invaders” … Once in London Jana’s routine of cleaning and sex work gets into a deadening groove and her escape is blocked off by her handler, Nicola (Ojan again), remind her that they know where her family and especially her sister lives. She’s trapped and yet resilient enough to find a means to survive within this horror; playing a version of herself that meets these men in terms of cunning, refusing the help of a journalist because she knows it will get her nowhere. 

The deeper she goes, the deeper she gets but there will be a reckoning… won’t there? Survival is complicated.

Eleanor Roberts 

IThankYou rating: **** Superbly directed by Maddy Corner, this is a play that pulls you into another world and continuously wrong-foots expectations and it will haunt me for days. Unsurprisingly it won an OFFIE Award and there will be many such garlands for this cast and this crew in the years ahead. 

Props too to stage designers Natasha Gatwood, Timothy Kelly and Kristina Kapilin for an impactful backdrop and artistically integrated captions that make Trade accessible to both d/Deaf audiences and native Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian speakers.

Trade runs at Pleasance Theatre until 25th March, Full details are on the Pleasance site.

It then moves on, click the links for ticket information: 

Nottingham Nonsuch on 1st April

Exeter Phoenix on 6th April, 

Birmingham Old Joint Stock from 7-9 April and

Norwich Arts Centre on 13th April. 

 

The Unseen website is here to find out more about modern slavery and human trafficking in this country; it’s here and there are people like Jana working throughout our economy, only a few paces away from our daily normalities, if we're lucky.

You can also order the Trade paperback from Salamander Street publishing with 10% of the sales going to support Unseen.

Levelled down… The City and the Town (2023), Wilton’s Music Hall and on tour

 

Who makes the Nazis?  Bad-bias TV,  Arena badges,  BBC, George Orwell, Burmese police...  Who Makes the Nazis?

Mark E Smith, The Fall

Go see this play. It’s funny it’s tragic and it doesn’t necessarily take your side. Unlike Mr Smith it suggests that answer to the question above is rather closer to home, but only if you fully engage in Anders Lustgarten’s finely wrought argument and sparked, cultured, characters each full of our pride and violence, our hate and our complacency, our privilege and our moral decline. As its title implies The City and the Town contains opposing concepts in equal measure, extremes balanced by an equality of uncertainty and an audience increasingly aware of its own complicity. There are no easy answers and there is no solution unless we accept everyone’s right to that resolution.

In his introduction to the script, Lustgarden quotes the hot dog guy meme – a group of people standing around discussing who could have possibly driven a hot dog shaped car through a shop window with a man dressed as a hot dog… but it’s not just Boris Johnson that’s to blame, the writer is equally scathing about Keir Starmer and Labour’s speedy return to old new Labour and a centre ground that we liberal elitists crave  mostly because it’s an improvement on the blatant cruelty and deception of the right.

Categorical thinking, pattern-recognition reflexes all undermine our ability to accept complexity and responsibility and the play runs headlong into these instincts and takes the audience with it with deft humour and three fascinating personas.

Gareth Watkins and Sam Collings - production shots Karl Andre 

It’s a story of a family forced apart by circumstance and two estranged brothers who come face-to-face for the first time in thirteen years for their father’s funeral. Ben (Sam Collings) is a corporate lawyer living in Crouch End with a nice wife and children, Nathaniel and Esmerelda, playing in their big garden. He looks around his father’s wreck of a house with all the disdain of someone who things they’ve improved beyond their roots, a place at Oxford having set him on a course for conventional success: a large Peugeot and a moustache.

By contrast, brother Magnus (Gareth Watkins) has the trappings of regional working-class culture, a tattoos on his skull that he couldn’t remove even if he wanted and which literally mark him apart from the bourgeoise concepts that cloud Ben’s self-esteem. Unlike Ben, Marcus has stayed the course and, after their mother left them and then his brother went to college, he was the one who stayed loyal to their father, supporting him in his hand-to-mouth engineering business.

Father and son preferred British motor bikes of more character than reliability, Triumph and BSA, as opposed to the far too perfect Japanese models. This affection is emblematic of pride in lost British manufacturing which gradually disappeared over decades of multi-party miss-management and capitalist imperatives, taking the heart from regional towns and cities many of which have not recovered… The Red Wall, the Brexit heartlands and a hotbed of alienation all far from “levelled up”.

Sam Collings and Gareth Watkins 

All brother Ben sees is someone less successful than himself, he tries to re-establish their relationship by bringing Magnus a suit jacket, a sign that he can only really view success on his terms – he doesn’t even consider that his brother may already have a suit. Magnus, for his part, is proud of the thousands of hours he has put into crafting his body in the gym: after all you either can or can’t bench-press 200kg, there’s no pretension just the act of strength, of manhood.

The brothers keep on moving closer, bonding on shared memories, Auntie Pauline and her Christmas gifts of chocolate selections which were bartered based on their favourites, the time they re-enacted the destruction of the death star, old haunts, old girlfriends… but they always violently pull apart. Too much water has passed under the bridge and Magnus’ now feels like his father’s keeper and that Ben is both phoney and faithless.

They argue bitterly about the funeral – a cremation not a burial and with no time for a speech from Ben, and then packing books from shelves, Ben come across tomes on right wing conspiracies which Magnus insists were his fathers but we learn later were his. Ben lacks the expression to truly relate and can only throw accusations of fascism and “perform disapproval” as Magnus pushes back at his southern softie of a sibling.

Sam Collings and Amelia Donkor

Act two starts off with Ben nursing a black eye delivered, as promised, by Magnus when he tried to speak at the funeral. He is being looked after by Lyndsay (Amelia Donkor) an ex-girlfriend who he left behind like everyone else… there’s still some warmth there but Lyndsay’s decision to say mystifies Ben as if the only solution to the situation they shared lay elsewhere.

Lyndsay proves more than his equal in eloquence and her own reasons for choosing the course she has gradually become painfully clear and carry a moral force that gradually shames both brothers as we find out the truth of Magnus’ situation and Ben’s essentially selfish decisions.

Ultimately both have taken refuge where they could, Magnus in far-right politics and Ben in imply following the money. Magnus is a remarkable creation, revulsion and sympathy mixed in one character and, in the end the same is true of his brother for different reasons. It’s not enough to call each other names, we need to understand and engage, as well as paying the price… to this extent Lyndsay is the bravest of the three.

But that’s just my take, catch this play if you can.

Gareth Watkins 

IThankYou Theatre Rating: **** Astonishingly well-written and performed with total commitment, this is a warm and brutally open story of our need to be truthful, loving and forgiving. We all need to take responsibility especially those of us from Northern towns who got lucky with an Oxbridge place and never really went home…

Riksteatern’s Head of Theatre and Artistic Director Dritëro Kasapi directs with power and clarity with his players leaving everything out on the stage, even big Gareth looking drained by the end, his a fascinating potrayal of a good man gone to waste. Sam and Amelia are equally intense and this is the closest you'll get to watching a three-way fifth set tie-break in theatrical Britain.

Ace design to from Hannah Sibai with lighting by Matt Haskins. 

The City and the Town is at Wilton’s Music Hall until Saturday 25^th and then onto the Mercury Theatre, Colchester, Norwich Playhouse and then Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough before a tour of Sweden in the autumn.

Full details can be found on the play’s website.