Reviews West End & Central Published 22 November 2012

Theatre Uncut

Young Vic ⋄ 12th-18th November 2012

Global reach, communal solutions.

Carmel Doohan

The second salvo of the Theatre Uncut project has spread its net further this time, encompassing plays from all across the world and examining the impact of the global recession.

After the success of their plays written in response to the coalition’s cuts in 2011, they have now commissioned plays from writers across four continents; so far the scripts have been downloaded by 187 people and between the 12th – 18th November, they were performed rights-free in universities, schools, theatres, community centres and streets across the world.

Emma Callander, Theatre Uncut’s co-artistic director opens this performance at the Young Vic by showing us a map marked with the locations the plays are being performed today; it is an impressive picture and the energy and excitement in the audience is inspiring.

Before the lights go down, Callander frames the Spanish offering, by asking us to imagine that the chair on the bare stage is a toilet and that there is a line of urinals along one side. Comedian Mark Thomas performs Blanca Doménech’s monologue Dead Point script-in-hand and is fantastic as a man who starts by ranting to himself in the office loo and ends up taking a stand for his right to live a “more authentic” life.

All the writers, performers, venues and directors involved in the project are donating their time for free and as a result, some of the pieces have only had as little as two hours rehearsal time (the first piece having had only a half hour read through.) Despite this, things run very smoothly with a guitarist struming gentle protest songs between plays while the minimal props are rearranged.

Next is Anders Lustgarten’s The Breakout. On the empty stage Gemma Johnson and Nadia Clifford do an excellent job of convincing the audience that they are about to escape from prison, even if this particular prison is one of the mind. In the dramatisation of a choice between being “comfortably miserable or scarily free,” Kirsty Housley’s direction is sharp and the script is tight. Lustgarten has spent many years working in prisons, teaching drama and devising academic courses for prisoners and he has a convincing grasp of the effects of both physical and mental institutionalisation.

Indulge, from Iceland, is written by Andri Snær Magnason and Thorleifur Arnarsson and directed by Callander, all to great comedic effect. We are flies on the wall in a branding meeting held by a large bank as employees brainstorm their way to success. Witty and insightful it builds to a gloriously surreal climax (yet one that is tellingly not that far removed from the reality it parodies.)

In Clare Brennan’s Spine, Holli Dempsey is magnificent as a young girl from South London, who is, in her own words “not exactly illiterate, but…” She befriends an old woman with a house full of stolen books and begins to read. This funny, moving monologue manages to combine a insightful run-down of the failure of the Left with a sharp enactment of how the country has changed over three generations. Between director (and Theatre Uncut’s other artistic director) Hannah Price and Dempsey the empty stage becomes a crumbling Miss Havisham-esque mansion, the spines of the books lining the road to empowerment, lining the dusty walls. This is a layered, twisting and beautifully told story that never reduces its characters to stereotypes.

From the USA comes Neil LaBute’s In the Beginning. A son is asking his father to give him the money he needs to get to New York so that he can join the Occupy movement. The father’s accusation of “You never speak in specifics” is an interesting accusation of the movement as a whole – “What do you stand for?” “Well, you know. Not just one thing. Lots of things…” – yet their dynamic well balanced; the fathers line that “You want me to pay for you to go down there and shit in a pot, so you can scold those who work?” is returned by his son in “Your time has passed. I am not the problem, I am the solution.” The generations are pitted against one another with the son echoing words his father may have once uttered in his younger more idealistic days- the characters are black and the previous generations civil rights protests are a continual subtext. It is skilled writing that can put two opposing sides of an important argument on stage and make us see the value in both.

The final play is from Syria: A Chance Encounter by Mohammad Al Attar. The acting here is impressive, the streets of Beirut effortlessly conjured up. Philip Arditti is utterly convincing as a Syrian protester prepared to take great risks for what he sees as justice. As with the previous piece, this, amongst other things, is a generational battle, but again, sides are not taken. What we are given is a vivid and personal snapshot of the issues at the heart of a wider conflict.

In making available such snapshots of the world we live in right now, Theatre Uncut are creating a theatre that feels vital. They state a desire to “encourage debate and galvanise action on the political issues that effect all of our lives” and these plays certainly generate discussion; led by Mark Thomas, the post-show talk allowed many passionate and engaged voices to speak out on the importance of educating ourselves about specific policies, on ‘entitled activists’ and on ways of making resistance movements more strategic and organised.

Whether theatre itself has the capacity to create systemic or even societal change is a complex question, but what these plays are doing is highlighting the common causes at the root of many seemingly separate problems. While the situation is playing out differently in each country, we are ultimately all fighting for similar things; these are communal problems to which we must find communal solutions.

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Carmel Doohan

Carmel is an arts journalist and writer who lives in Hackney, London.

Theatre Uncut Show Info


Directed by Emma Callander, Hannah Price

Link http://www.theatreuncut.com/

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