East End Review

Category: STAGE

Hackney playwright details foster care experience in debut play

Playwright Tosin Alabi’s debut play about foster care opens next month

Tosin Alabi was 15 when she was placed into foster care with her 10-year-old sister following the death of their mother.

Now aged 25, she has started a theatre company Azai Gallery, and written her debut play about her experience in care.

Four Paintings, which opens in November at Space Studios on Mare Street, recounts those tough initial months after her mother’s death.

“I went numb for a very long time, I blocked everything out. The experience made me a lot less family orientated,” she says.

Being without a family meant Tosin struggled to grieve properly or even process what had happened.

But her foster home she describes as a house “filled with love” – she was even surprised to learn that her foster parents were being paid.

The experience of being in foster care she found on the whole positive, and credits it for improving her grades and behaviour as a teenager.

She has less kind words about her social workers, however. During her time in care, she only had one positive experience of a social worker.

“A lot of people go into social care as a job, not because they want to help,” she explains.

At 18, Tosin was placed into shared accommodation for care leavers, where she said she received “no support”. So while her sister stayed in foster care, she was “just thrown out into the big world”.

Four Paintings combines art and performance, with the stage set up as a gallery with paintings on the walls.

“I thought it would be nice to have art and performance combined as I love both,” she writes on her blog.

Tosin sent three artist friends the play’s opening monologue and asked them to create paintings based on it.

“I gave them no creative direction apart from the minimum canvas size of the painting,” she says

Tosin always wanted art to complement the performance, to challenge and explore its meaning on a deeper level.

The idea spurred her creativity, and before she had put pen to paper she knew art would play a massive role in her debut play.

Four Paintings
10 November
129–131 Mare Street, E8 3RH
spacestudios.org.uk

October 27, 2016
Human rights play to shed light on ‘biggest unreported war story of our time’

Workshop for The Island Nation

The final phase of the 26-year conflict in Sri Lanka between government forces and the rebel Tamil Tigers is the biggest unreported war story of our time, according to human rights theatre company Ice and Fire.

Their new play, The Island Nation, is set in Sri Lanka during the latter years of Asia’s longest-running civil war, a conflict which is thought to have claimed the lives of 100,000 people.

Playwright Christine Bacon wrote the play, which opens this month at the Arcola in Dalston, to address what she calls a “black hole in history”.

“It’s one of those things that seems to have passed the world by and it really shouldn’t have,” says Bacon when we meet in her Bethnal Green office.

“I think people know snippets: they’ve heard of the Tamil Tigers, or maybe they’ve been there on honeymoon, but the final stages of it were extremely brutal in terms of the extent of human suffering.

“It’s something that in any other context would have been headline news.”

The Sri Lankan Civil War began in July 1983 with an armed insurgency against the government by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (Tamil Tigers).

The Tamil Tigers wanted to create an independent Tamil state called Tamil Eelam in the north and the east of the island.

The conflict ravaged the population, environment and economy of Sri Lanka.

In 2009, after two decades of fighting, with several failed peace talks and false dawns, the Tamil Tigers were defeated.

In that same year, Bacon recalls international outcry at the bombing of civilians in Gaza.

She compares it to the situation in Sri Lanka. where civilians were bombed “indiscriminately” with nothing reported and only a muted response from the UN. So why the disparity?

“There’s multiple reasons why and that’s what this play delves into and tries to address,” says Bacon.

“Sri Lanka is basically an authoritarian country and way down on the press freedom list. It’s one of the most dangerous places to be a journalist so dissent on a domestic level is very rare, and the media weren’t even reporting it in Sri Lanka itself,” Bacon says.

The play, partly based on true events, tells the story of Nila, a young Tamil woman trapped in rebel-held territory, and a British aid worker desperate to get her out.

“There are three strands to the play,” Bacon explains. “It looks at what was happening in the war zone and the people who were trapped there.

“Then there’s the role of the UN and how they basically shut their eyes and ears and hoped it was all going to end.”

The final strand of the play is the peace process itself. Norway was asked to mediate in the conflict, and one of the politicians who tried to broker the cease-fire is a character in the play.

“His involvement in the conflict spans around 10 to 15 years,” says Bacon.

“So the play begins in around 1999 and goes up until 2009. It compresses a lot into an hour and a half.

“But for an audience that has no idea of what was going on in Sri Lanka you have to give them that history about where the conflict came from, who the Tamil Tigers were and what that wrangling was all about before you go into what happened at the end.”

The civil war officially ended in 2009, but that doesn’t mean that the minority Tamil population are still not suffering human rights violations, Bacon stresses.

“Freedom from Torture, a UK charity providing clinical services to torture survivors, has reported The Sri Lankan Tamils as the highest proportion of their case load for many years since the conflict ended,” she says.

“There was a cut off point but the abuses and the human rights violations certainly have not stopped – our play ends with a nod to the fact that it isn’t over.”

The Island Nation
26 October – 19 November
Arcola Theatre, 24 Ashwin Street, E8 3DL
arcolatheatre.com

October 13, 2016
Sleepless, Shoreditch Town Hall, preview: exploring Fatal Familial Insomnia

Jake Ferretti in the play Sleepless, at Shoreditch Town Hall until 14 September

Margaret Thatcher famously ran the country on five hours a night, but for many a fitful night’s sleep can destroy any hope of functioning like a reasoned human being.

Insomnia, however, comes in degrees of severity, and at Shoreditch Town Hall this month a new play explores the most rare and horrifying strain of them all.

Sleepless is inspired by the true story of a family and the disease that cursed them for generations, playwright Hannah Barker tells me.

“The inspiration comes from a book called The Family Who Couldn’t Sleep, a true life account written by a science journalist about a Italian family that has this very rare condition called Fatal Familial Insomnia (FFI)),” the playwright says.

“It’s this frightening thing that belongs in a horror movie really because it’s this condition where your pupils become like pinpricks, you sweat profusely and you just really struggle sleeping.

“What that progresses to is complete inability to sleep and a slow and quite painful death over the course of nine to 18 months.”

Balvinder Sopal and Andrea Quirbach in Sleepless

The play takes the form of a detective story in which a woman whose mother has died in mysterious circumstances goes on a journey to find out what really happened.

In the process she learns about this peculiar genetic disease that robs you of sleep and progressively shuts down the mind and body.

Barker, a Londoner and former Dalston resident, says her theatre company Analogue, which has a reputation for combining powerful storytelling with rigorous scientific research, wanted to delve into the real life implications of having the disease.

“We wanted to show what it would really mean for a human being. There’s the fact it’s a rare human condition so there’s not a lot funding for research into it. So it really puts into question the value of a human life and how many people need to be affected for it to be worth it.

“On top of that there’s the question of living under the shadow this genetic disease. If you do have the disease there’s a 50 per cent chance you’ll pass it on to your children, so if you decide to have children you could be effectively handing down a death sentence.”

This may sound somewhat morbid, but Barker and the cast counter a potentially gloomy subject matter with moments of lightness and an exploration of the subconscious realm between being asleep and awake.

“What’s interesting about this show is what you can do within that zone of sleep and wake, you’ve got real creative licence to explore what’s in your subconscious,” Barker says.

As the daughter pieces together the jigsaw with the help of a doctor, becoming more of an unreliable narrator in the process, the play reaches an unexpected denouement.

Although reluctant to reveal more, Barker is confident the play will keep audiences wide-awake.

Sleepless
Until 14 September
Shoreditch Town Hall
380 Old Street, EC1V 9LT
shoreditchtownhall.com

September 5, 2016
Barred: prison play asks if art and education can rehabilitate offenders

Barred playwright Dean Stalham

A theatre company is this month staging a play that asks searching questions of the criminal justice system.

Barred is set inside a cell in the infamous Strangeways prison, where two characters debate whether art and education are viable means of rehabilitation for prisoners.

For 52-year-old playwright Dean Stalham the answer is, undoubtedly, yes.

Stalham, who now lives on Chrisp Street, grew up on a council estate in Burnt Oak and left school at 15 with no O-Levels.

He says he had “no conception of what art was” until serving a six-year stint in Wandsworth prison for handling stolen prints by Warhol and Dali.

Stalham was one of 13 inmates (out of more than 1,500) allowed to take an art course. During the course he made a painting of Mickey Mouse in a Warhol style with the caption: “This is not Mickey Mouse.”

It was selected for inclusion in an exhibition of offenders’ art, an experience that changed Stalham’s life.

His family went along and saw the painting sell for £250. The news galvanised Stalham, but not as much as when his brother told him that he thought he had talent.

“It was like a bolt of lightening,” Stalham recalls, and the belief it gave him rekindled in him an interest in writing plays.

“My first play I wrote in prison was performed by actors from the Royal Court in front of 200 inmates. Just the applause that I got was enough to say this is it this what I want to do for the rest of my life,” Stalham says.

Since his release in 2006, Stalham has devoted his life to art. He founded the charity Art Saves Lives and introduced Billy Bragg’s band for former prisoners, Jail Guitar Doors, at Glastonbury.

He has had a film shown on Channel 4 and written several well-received plays, including 2010’s God Don’t Live on a Council Estate.

“The underbelly of society have been drip-fed for hundreds of years the idea that art’s not to be trusted, that art doesn’t put food on the table, that art doesn’t pay the bills and therefore they don’t have art in their lives,” he says.

“But once art’s in your life the world’s a better place. With art you can communicate, and if you communicate you share and the whole world opens up to you. I know that it does work because I’m living proof of it.”

Barred was performed at The Royal Court last year. Back then it looked at the theme of mental health in prison. Stalham was encouraged enough by its reception to adapt the play with a different theme this year.

“Most of it’s based on my experience,” he explains. “It’s two men in a cell, and one of them believes he can get rehabilitated through education, and the other, who can’t read or write (something there’s a lot of in prison), has no faith in that whatsoever.”

Last year, the actors involved all had first-hand experience of the criminal justice system. This year Stalham has cast his net wider.

Playing the lead is Nigel Travis, who has worked as a fire fighter for 22 years and runs a boxing club for underprivileged kids in Moss Side, Manchester.

Stalham says casting people from a range of backgrounds is an important aim.

“It’s about showing there is a talent and a passion out there capturing and nurturing and encouraging it,” he says.

“I don’t want to get on a soapbox but I just think we’ve got a rawness and a gutsiness that probably trained actors haven’t got and that gives the play an edge.

“Without wanting to be, we’re very unstructured but stories are stories and whether they’re structured or not shouldn’t matter as long as it’s engaging and entertaining.”

Barred
Brady Arts Centre
15/16 September
192-196 Hanbury Street, E1 5HU
(Free admission)

September 2, 2016
Saddled with Shakespeare: The Handlebards ride to Geffrye Museum

The Handlebards’ all-female troupe. Photograph: The Handlebards

How different Shakespeare’s plays would have been had bicycles existed in his day.

Richard III might have declared: “A bike! A bike! My kingdom for a bike!” and that famous stage direction in The Winter’s Tale “exit, pursued by a bear” may not have resulted in the death of poor Antigonus.

This month an all-bicycling theatre company giving new meaning to the phrase ‘play cycle’ by pedaling more than 1,000 miles across the country to perform Shakespeare.

The Handlebards are two acting troupes (one male, one female) with four members each. They load up their bicycles with set, props and costumes and perform Shakespeare on the hoof in a manner they describe as “energetic, charmingly chaotic and environmentally sustainable”.

On a national tour of more than 50 venues, the group’s all-female crew will be stopping off at the Geffrye Museum for “knee-slapping, inventive, off-the-wall,” performances of two Shakespeare classics: Romeo and Juliet, his tale of star-crossed lovers, and early comedy The Taming of the Shrew.

The cycling actors embarked on their first tour in 2013 and have performed in schools across the country as well as performing in India, Singapore, Malaysia and Myanmar.

In 2014 the group won the Edinburgh Fringe Sustainable Practice Award for saving 50.2 tonnes of CO2 by travelling by bike.

Romeo and Juliet (9 September)
The Taming of the Shrew (10 September)
The Geffrye Museum
136 Kingsland Road
E2 8EA
geffrye-museum.org.uk

August 31, 2016
Grimeborn Festival, Arcola, review: ‘excellent programme of rarities and standards’

Roger Paterson and Nick Dwyer perform in Mozart and Salieri at Grimeborn Festival

The Grimeborn festival is an amazing venture: over seven weeks the visitor to the Arcola can see – if they’ve got the stamina – 16 shows for as little as £10 a throw (with a ‘passport’).

As implied by the tongue-in-cheek name, it is no luxurious experience; but it succeeds in getting opera back to its experimental roots.

Consider Fire Ring, a genuine rarity – a 1930 opera produced by London Armenian Opera (which makes it sound like we have been missing a large repertoire all these years). In truth, the music in this opera is not that great with a repetitive style.

The plot is a puzzle and does not reveal why such ill-starred lovers from opposite sides of the conflict should bond so deeply. But the production has tremendous brio, not least from the spirited chorus who stand Greek-like above the fray.

Mozart and Salieri is a gem. Peter Shaffer’s play is well known as is the overacted film Amadeus, but few realise these pieces derive from this short opera by Rimsky-Korsakov with a libretto by Pushkin.

With such talented progenitors, it is no wonder that the original has a humanity and gentleness that the more theatrical variants don’t have.

The medium of opera works so well as the music gradually shifts back and forth between Rimsky-Korsakov’s long tones and sharper Mozartian passages. Depending on just two singers (outnumbered by the three instrumentalists), it keeps an intimate tone.

Grimeborn still needs to deliver the standards, the operas that people have heard of that get bums on seats. These productions come with danger in that they are intended for the opera house, but in the Arcola large voices can drown everything out, as Natasha Jouhi does in title role of Tosca, and where the single piano can make the opera sound like a silent movie.

In fact, pianist Richard Leach brings out the tenderness in Puccini’s music, and Stephen Aviss as has a classic tenor voice, which he reins in carefully. The production is spare, but it does not matter. Why all the dry ice – surely the Napoleon’s cannons are a long way off?

The Marriage of Figaro is even more of a stalwart and Opera24 & Darker Purpose deliver a solid production that conveys the right amount of energy and delivers the necessary comic timing. There is no need for much of a set though; the imaginary doors being opened are a bit irritating.

The parts are clearly sung – the loose English translation produced vernacular phrases that made the audience laugh. The star of the show is Sofia Troncoso as Susanna, who has a supple voice and acting ability.

For a bit of silliness, The Perfect Picnic, with its send up of opera and the middle classes, starts well. But the jokes wear thin – it could have been done in an hour like other short pieces in Grimeborn’s excellent programme.

Grimeborn
Until 10 September
Arcola Theatre, 24 Ashwin Street, E8 3DL
arcolatheatre.com

August 23, 2016
From the Ground Up, Shoreditch Town Hall, review: ‘a lo-fi game show experience’

The cast of From the Ground Up. Photograph: Almeida

We are rather familiar with binary choices these days – leave or remain, independence or union, Clinton or Trump.

Our views on these issues unite and divide us, and depending on how you look at it, they can define us.

From the Ground Up is an immersive performance devised by the Almeida young company touching on the binary decisions that matter.

Written by the co-founder of the pioneering and provocative Belgian theatre company Ontroerend Goed, it asks the hardest of questions directly to its audience.

Performed underneath Shoreditch Town Hall, the audience is led from the foyer to the street, and down into the recesses of the building.

On the way a fellow audience member suggested turning on her pedometer. Indeed the signs suggested it would be us, rather than the company, doing all the legwork.

The Almeida’s education department enjoys an excellent reputation, and is not afraid to challenge their young members with alternative and contemporary theatrical forms.

This show was no different – not quite a play, not quite live art, in fact it was more of a lo-fi game show experience where the only answers were yes and no and the only questions devilishly difficult moral dilemmas.

“Are you afraid of interactive theatre?” A stifled laugh. “Are you afraid that we might ask you to do something?” A terrified silence.

Once we were numbered and the preliminary assessments made, the real questioning began. Are benefit cheats unforgiveable? Does race matter?

Half of the group watched whilst the rest wrangled with their moral compass. Is monogamy idealistic? Would you fight for peace?

Absent of ‘actors’ in the traditional sense, the ‘stage’ became something else too – a means to view each other, and ourselves. With those who participated exercising their right to speak but at the high cost of being judged by everyone else.

And the company made it crystal clear that was what we were all doing: “Number 19 has never engaged in sexting” they would announce, exposing to the room any admission which had gone unnoticed.

Executing an unusual piece like this demands a huge amount of confidence and clarity from the performers, as well as the ability to put an audience immediately at ease.

The company had this in spades. The standard of work and the ability of the performers far outreaching their age and relative inexperience.

To create such intelligent, interrogative work and deliver it with such presence and panache, the fact that this cohort of 16-25 year olds is destined for great things is no longer in question.

August 11, 2016
Africa Utopia comes to the Southbank Centre 31 August – 4 September

The Mandela Trilogy – an “epic operatic tribute.” Photograph: John Snelling

Africa Utopia presents talks, workshops, music, comedy and performances that celebrate the arts and culture of one of the world’s most dynamic and fast-changing continents.

Featuring a full programme of talks and debates, Africa Utopia highlights the many ways in which the African continent is leading the way in thinking about culture, politics and the arts. A host of experts, entrepreneurs and activists come together as we discuss great innovations, people and progress across the continent and share ideas for positive change in Africa.

Witness the return of Chineke! Orchestra, Britain’s first professional orchestra made up entirely of black and minority ethnic musicians, and discover the story of Nelson Mandela in Mandela Trilogy’s epic operatic tribute, presented in three parts by a cast of over 60 performers, including three different incarnations of Mandela.

Members of the Chineke! Orchestra. Photograph: Eric Richmond

Other highlights include a live rooftop performance by desert rock band Terakaft, an evening of comedy from across the diaspora with Presidents of Laughrica, an exploration of social power dynamics in Expensive Sh*t and a delicious street food market.

Bring the family along and get involved in events for all ages. Hear an African retelling of the fairytale Rapunzel, join author Sade Falipe on an ABC Adventure, search for treasure in Mary Ononokpono’s antiquities hunt or move and groove with your little ones in an Africa Utopia special edition of Pram Jam.

Fuel up at the African Food and Drink Takeover and savour tastes from across the continent as Southbank Centre square is turned into a bustling street-food market, with over 35 vendors of authentic African cuisine.

Plus, over half the events are completely free. Learn new moves in dance workshops, discover your new favourite dish in a live cook off, take a riverside tour of London’s African history or get involved in a part in a giant flash mob.

Africa Utopia
31 August – 4 September
Southbank Centre
Belvedere Rd,
SE1 8XX

July 29, 2016
‘It was love soup’: Britten in Brooklyn with Sadie Frost at Wilton’s Music Hall

Sadie Frost is set to play the role of Gypsy. Photograph: Rachell Smith

A dilapidated town house in New York was once home to a diverse community of writers and artists, including exiled composer Benjamin Britten, the writers WH Auden and Carson McCullers, and stripper and burlesque dancer Gypsy Rose Lee.

Britten in Brooklyn, a play by Zoe Lewis, travels back to 1940 to recall the group’s lives together – the parties and affairs – and how their bohemian idyll fell apart once the reality of the Second World War took hold.

Actress and celebrity Sadie Frost is poised to take up the role of Gypsy when the play opens this month at Wilton’s Music Hall.

Speaking to the East End Review, Frost says the play enticed her to take time out from her film production company and burgeoning fashion label.

“The script got sent to me, and I thought it was just so beautifully written,” explains the 51-year-old mother of four, whose previous acting credits include a leading role in Bram Stoker’s Dracula and the iconic music video for Pulp’s Common People.

“There’s such diverse range of characters and you all get them vying for attention and challenging each other in their relationships.

“It’s also very apt because it’s all about the propaganda just before the Second World War, about borders and whether to let people in or look after yourself and your own.”

Frost starred in Zoe Lewis’s one-woman play, Touched … For the Very First Time, back in 2010, but describes this new play as “a very different type of writing”.

“It’s political, historical, farcical, funny, and has so many elements,” she says.

Frost was drawn to the character of Gypsy Rose Lee, a theatrical entertainer whose extraordinary life was made into a film and Stephen Sondheim musical.

“She grew up in a poverty stricken family with her mum and sister, and they were on the road entertaining, going from village to village and trying to make ends meet,” Frost says.

Gypsy was a pioneer of the art of striptease, reciting poetry or whilst peeling off a glove or flinging a ribbon to her howling admirers.

“She had this amazing comedic quality, and didn’t really take her clothes off,” Frost says. “She just alluded to it but in such a funny way that people were really mesmerised.”

In its Victorian heyday, Wilton’s Music Hall was home to hedonists of all stripes, and Frost says the venue’s “old school” authenticity is sure to add to the play.

“It’s this love soup where they’re all living together in this crazy way, talking about Picasso and Dali,” she says.

Frost herself is no stranger to a bohemian style of life. During her “chaotic but positive” childhood in Islington, she and her siblings were forbidden from saying “No” or “Sorry”, and, as a test of character, forced to refer to objects as the most opposite things they could think of.

And during the 1990s Frost was part of the party-loving ‘Primrose Hill’ set, alongside model Kate Moss.

The lives of artists, entertainers and writers have long been characterised as louche hedonists, with their ‘loose morals’ questioned by the socially conservative.

But today’s young artists, with piles of student debt and worries about jobs, seem, anecdotally at least, a more sensible breed.

“I can think of times when I’ve been with a few friends and we’re having a real laugh and it’s all been quite decadent,” Frost recalls.

“But no, now we’re all quite serious and rather grown up and have far too much responsibility.

“So this hedonistic scenario where all these people are living in this crazy way is nice to see though,” she adds as a caveat, “people do fall apart if they live it”.

Britten in Brooklyn
31 August – 17 September
Wilton’s Music Hall
1 Grace’s Alley
E1 8JB

July 25, 2016
The Passion of Lady Vendredi: Rich Mix to stage ‘blaxploitation epic’

‘Blaxploitation heroine’: Lady Vendredi by John Jordan

An immersive and explosive piece of musical theatre is set to kick off this month’s Arts Ensemble at Rich Mix.

Part cabaret, part gig, The Passion of Lady Vendredi has been described as a “mytho-poetic epic chronicling the misadventures, quest and ultimate revenge of a blaxploitation heroine.”

Fresh from a successful run at Soho Theatre, the immersive piece sees the eponymous Lady Vendredi rise through the ranks of extreme feminist cult M.A.M.A. (Mothers Against Male Aggression) who believe a female paradise can only be established by starting a gender war.

Lady Vendredi is the alter-ego of Nwando Ebizie, a Hackney-based composer, recording artist, DJ and performer who runs the experimental theatre company Mas Productions with director Jonathan Grieve.

“From an audience perspective the experience is going into a mythological space akin to a Greek Hades or a post-apocalyptic feminist cult,” Ebizie says.

“There’s going to be an initiation and the audience is part of it, so it’s not like sitting down and watching a play.”

The idea for the character of Lady Vendredi is a hybrid of evangelical preacher and northern male comedian, Ebizie explains.

“I’m really into black preachers and how when you watch their ceremonies they’re like pop stars.

“But Lady Vendredi has her own alter egos that she transforms into during the show. One of them is influenced by white working class comedians.

Ebzie was brought up in Oldham, and the idea of playing a character who is a charismatic master of ceremonies one moment, white male northern comedian the next, was born through the weight of expectation she felt getting up on stage as a black woman.

“There’s a narrative that people expect when you’re a black woman performer, so I thought I’d give the audience something they wouldn’t expect,” she says.

“When I was first starting out I think people wanted to see an amazing, glamorous soul song diva – and if that’s not you then people seem to get confused. So I began to play on that.”

Allusions to myths and fairytales abound, and the show even references voodoo – something Ebizie developed an interest in whilst researching her ancestry in Nigeria.

“I’m Igbo, which is a people from Nigeria, and I wanted to find out more about our rituals and dances pre-colonialism,” she explains.

“It was quite difficult until we happened to meet a Haitian voodoo dance teacher.

“It came about that the mythology, the ritual and rhythms and even the symbolic art, came from an Igbo indigenous script.

“I thought it was amazing that I was finding out about possible historical ancestry through a place that is miles and miles away from my original homeland.”

One review of the show from its run at Soho Theatre earlier this year suggested audience members have a drink or two beforehand. How involved is it for audience members?

“You don’t have to do anything like that,” she assures. “Basically it’s just like going to a gig where weird stuff happens.

“It’s not one of these immersive shows where you have to pretend to be a dog or anything like that.”

The Passion of Lady Vendredi
8 July
Rich Mix, 35-47 Bethnal Green Rd, E1 6LA
richmix.org.uk

July 4, 2016