East End Review

Author: East End Review

Another World, National Theatre, review: ‘reminder how powerful a tool verbatim theatre can be’

(L-R) Zara Azam (student), Farshid Rokey (student), Nabil Elouahbi (Mohamed Akunjee). Photograph: Tristram Kenton

In February last year, without a word of warning to their parents, three schoolgirls from Bethnal Green left their homes for Syria. They are just some of the estimated 800 Britons said to have joined so-called Islamic State since its conception. As fear over terrorism continues to dominate headlines, it’s a topic that’s attracted panic, frustration, and blame on all sides. What remains unclear though, is why exactly so many young Muslims are risking their lives to join the organisation.

Another World: Losing Our Children to the Islamic State does not provide a solution to this overwhelmingly complicated issue, nor does it try to. Instead, what you get is a calm, serious discussion that rises above the commotion. Encompassing a whole range of views, the documentary theatre play by Gillian Slovo and Nicholas Kent uses material taken from interviews with researchers, politicians, young people, and families of the young men and women who left to fight. Word for word, the cast retells their conversations with astounding detail and focus.

There’s nothing particularly fancy about Another World in the way of stagecraft, but that doesn’t make it any less engrossing. The Syrian conflict, radicalisation, and the government’s prevent strategy all get a look in without jargon or pretence. The way in which the performance avoids any whiff of preachiness is equally impressive.

The testimonies from the mothers of those gone to Syria are as heart breaking as you might expect; their guilt and grief run deep. While their children’s backgrounds and characters all vary, their lives are all united by a deep-rooted feeling of displacement in society – the phrase “just something missing” keeps cropping up.

But perhaps the most insightful moments of the play are the discussions with Muslim teenagers from East London, who chat freely about their bafflement over the rise of IS and their fears of prejudice in after the Paris attacks. Theirs are voices that are not heard enough over the fierce political rhetoric both here and abroad, and it’s a reminder of how powerful a tool verbatim theatre can be. Another World is an entirely sophisticated, sensitive and important work.

Another World: Losing Our Children to the Islamic State is at the National Theatre, Upper Ground, South Bank, SE1 9PX until 7 May.

May 6, 2016
Boy, Almeida, review: ‘a nightmare vision of consumerist Britain’

Frankie Fox is Liam (left with bag) in Boy at the Almeida Theatre. Photograph: Kwame Lestrade

Cut-outs of Billy Elliot, the working class boy who defies the odds to fulfil his dancing dreams dangle tauntingly above the Almeida stage during Leo Butler’s haunting new play.

Below, director-designer team Sacha Wares and Miriam Buether bring to life the mean streets of London in a way that calls foul the Billy Elliot myth of social mobility.

The stage is a slow-moving circular conveyor belt, filled at the start by the huge cast of mostly unknown actors. School children wait at the bus stop, a man talks loudly on his phone, and random snatches of dialogue overlap to give a sense of the urban melee.

As actors hop off the conveyor belt to reappear later on as different characters, one face in the crowd remains. Liam (newcomer Frankie Fox) is 17, has dropped out of education and faces an uncertain future.

Without money, qualifications or a supportive family, Liam is ill-equipped for life in austerity-era London. “You don’t know much, Steven,” says his friend’s mother, getting his name wrong. Fox is excellent as Liam, his eyes sunken, his body language uncertain and apologetic, his speech confused.

We follow Liam for a day as he trudges through the streets of London in his grey tracksuit and plastic rucksack. On the trail of a friend, Liam’s odyssey across London is fruitless from the start. He gets in trouble for not having a ticket on the tube, and one particularly grim moment sees him down and out, eating fried chicken in the cubicle of a public toilet.

Reaching Oxford Street, giant letters spelling out the name of the sportswear chain Sports Direct fill the stage. It’s a nightmare vision of consumerist Britain, and Liam lacks the tools to cope with any of it, as he struggles to articulate his sense of alienation from mainstream society.

With a roll call of bit-part characters, Boy is a somewhat disjointed play but the production by Miriam Buether and Sacha Wares raises it to the level of brilliant drama. Their perpetually looping stage brings to life a bleak vision of London, featuring everything from Oyster barriers to self-service checkouts.

Following Alecky Blythe’s Little Revolution and Re: Home by Cressida Brown, Boy is the latest play to focus on growing levels of inequality in the capital. But what makes Boy the most disturbing of the bunch is that is it neither blames nor offers redemption.

Boy is at the Almeida Theatre, N1 1TA until 28 May.

May 6, 2016
Green Film Festival screens a global selection of eco-cinema at the Barbican

A still from The Shore Break, one of the films to be screened at the Green Film Festival

Independent films that shine a light on global environmental issues are to be shown nationwide this month as part of the sixth annual UK Green Film Festival.

The Barbican is an official partner of the festival, and will be showing films throughout the first week of May that focus on “shifting the global narrative toward a sustainable future” and give insights into environmental problems in far-reaching corners of the globe.

This year’s selection includes Racing Extinction, an investigative documentary in which Oscar-winning director Louie Psihoyos infiltrates black markets to expose the hidden world of endangered species.

The Shore Break is the story of two cousins from South Africa’s Wild Coast who have differing plans to develop their land. While Nonhle wants to develop eco-tourism to protect the community’s traditional way of life, Madiba is planning a titanium mine and national tolled highway.

Also screening is the UK premiere of The Messenger, which chronicles the plight of songbirds worldwide to survive in turbulent environmental conditions brought about by humans.

Festival director Daniel Beck said: “The UK Green Film Festival has captivated and inspired ever increasing audiences and we are very pleased to witness that there’s a growing appetite for issue-based films.”

Green Film Festival
Until 8 May
Barbican Centre, Silk Street, EC2Y 8DS
barbican.org.uk

May 4, 2016
Feral – Ulli Mattsson review: ‘urging new water through old riverbeds’

Ulli Mattsson. Photograph: Adam Weymouth

For Ulli Mattsson the water has always been synonymous with home. Growing up by a river on the border of Swedish Lapland, she has lived for the past six years aboard a former peat-transporter on the River Lea. This century-old barge has doubled as both abode and arena, acting as the stage from which she recently launched debut album Feral and its accompanying tour over the course of three intimate nightly shows down in Hackney Wick.

Feral’s invocation of the waterways acts as an antidote to homesickness that delves deep into the tradition of Scandinavian folk music. Beginning with ‘Blue Whales’, an elegiac waltz of blunted guitar cut through by pining strings, it is a song saturated with a yearning for landscapes of her past, for blue whales and other organisms not usually found in the depths of the Lea.

‘Mother’, the record’s lead single, similarly follows this notion of loss and yearning but with more dynamism in the music. The guitar is upbeat despite the bleakness of the narrative, and this renewed vigour propels the album forward.

Lyrically, the album seems to take its inspirations from folk oral traditions. Mattsson’s vocals, though minimal in range, materialise with a raw tenacity that conjures fragments of her homeland into a collage of aquatic ecology, oceanic mythology, and her own existence.

It is an album of stories that find their sources in both the individual and communal tales of sea-faring creatures, from the account of the lonesome ‘Riverwoman’, to references to Queequeg and the Sirens found in ‘Winter’s Waiting’.

Ulli Mattsson’s Feral. Photograph: Adam Weymouth

Whilst the first half of the record pays due reverence to traditional instrumentation, the song ‘Magpie’ ushers in a change of scenery. The sudden deluge of electronic instruments that appear in the middle-eight presents an interesting contrast to Mattsson’s personal take on the old ‘One For Sorrow’ nursery rhyme. It brings out a clear sense of divergence from what has come before, thrusting the record into new waters.

Subsequently, tracks such as ‘Wandering Lights’ and ‘Last Song’ offer some of the most surprising and interesting musical moments on the album in a honeyed cohesion between deep, ritualistic percussion, and the flash and twinkle of modern programming.

It is through this mixture of old and new, here and there, that Mattsson uses Feral to draw original noises from traditional sounds, urging new water through old riverbeds.

ullimattsson.com

April 27, 2016
In a Land of Paper Gods author on ‘naughty children who disappeared from history’

Rebecca Mackenzie, author of In a Land of Paper Gods

Rebecca Mackenzie grew up in the jungles of Thailand, where her parents worked as Christian missionaries, but at 12 she and her family moved back to a Scottish fishing village.

Now living in Hackney, MacKenzie has written her debut novel, In a Land of Paper Gods, which steers away from her early experiences to tell the story of a schoolgirl in a boarding school in China at the outbreak of the second Sino-Japanese War.

Rebecca, how long have you lived in Hackney?

I moved to London at 17 when I went to university and I’ve been here ever since. I moved to Dalston over ten years ago. Friends used to be hugely relieved when I’d meet them from the bus stop and walk them back again. Now I live at the top of a vicarage in Stoke Newington. I love it, even though the first thing I see outside my front door is a graveyard.

The thing that seems to have struck a lot of reviewers is that it’s quite personal book – something that had parallels with what you experienced growing up.

What drew me to the lives of missionary kids was my personal experience. I grew up in what was partly an evangelical environment, but I was also surrounded by Thai animism, spirit worship, and the idea that there were spirits and creatures everywhere. But I chose to set the book in a different part of Asia, at a different period in history because I needed that distance to kickstart my imagination.

While there are definitely biographical themes there’s also a truth that comes from my dreamworld that’s not like the truth of your day-to-day reality.

I believe in synchronicity as well and there were synchronous moments in the writing for the book. For example I went to interview an English woman who’d lived in China during the Sino-Japanese war, and like me she was the daughter of missionaries. We were having this nice cup of tea together and I felt something. I couldn’t stop looking at her. It turned out that she’d returned from China to Edinburgh and she’d moved into the same street in Edinburgh I’d lived on, 50 years before me, and her grandparents came from the same tiny village in the north of Scotland my grandparents came from.

I thought that the voice of the lead character, Etta, was very strong. How did you create her?

I saw these formal school photographs at SOAS from a missionary school. Some children, if they weren’t sitting still, became a kind of blur. I became interested in these naughty children, who somehow disappeared from history as a result of fidgeting.

What things as a writer do you find particularly helpful about living in London?

Being near other writers and other creative people is a wonderful resource, but with that comes distraction.

How do you make time for writing, solitude and focus?

I love sitting in Rare Books and Music in the British Library. The concentration in there spurs me on to keep working.

In a Land of Paper Gods
is published by Tinder Press.
RRP: £16.99 ISBN: 9781472224194

April 21, 2016
Lobster Bar, Hackney Central, review: sensational crustaceans

Under the sea: Lobster Bar is the latest restaurant to open on Richmond Road

There is now a lobster bar in Hackney Central. While we were all processing the idea of ramen on Mare Street, Lobster Bar opened with little fanfare in early September, nestled between Raw Duck and Lardo, serving seafood, steaks and cocktails.

Cristine Leone, its director, runs the popular Ivy’s Mess Hall and, until recently, the now shuttered Little Ivy’s on Lower Clapton Road. Of the latter, Cristine says its success was also its demise: “People who came for a meal would stay for hours,” she says, “which was great…” The small number of tables however, meant the venture wasn’t financially viable without cuts to quality. So the team decided that rather than compromise they would open Lobster Bar, where I can happily report that no such cuts are apparent.

The seafood is excellent: we had Maldon oysters on the half shell, followed by a smoky, meaty, decadent chargrilled octopus leg (more on this below), as well as seared scallops on a bed of silky cauliflower purée. The lobster melted in the mouth (partially due to generous quantities of butter), without any of the dryness I often associate with lobster. We also had a steak that was tender enough that I suspect it could have been eaten blue, and wasn’t just a standalone for those who hate shellfish.

The restaurant’s inventive cocktails featured a plethora of Italian liqueurs, and as I am wholly uneducated when it comes to wine that is not of the most basic French or Spanish variety, our friendly waiter gently guided us to a stunning Riesling, with sweet undertones but dry enough to partner up with seafood.

We concluded the meal with a delicate poached peach, wexcellent food and servicehich brings me to my only qualm with LB, and extends to most new restaurants I’ve visited in the last year: a sense of reiteration. LB’s tasteful, gleaming “warehouse chic” interior is so similar to its neighbours that after being seated, I expressed consternation that Raw Duck had shut, believing to be in its former premises.

Similarly, there’s food déjà vu: the grilled octopus leg, the single peach as pudding: both have appeared multiple times in places I’ve reviewed in the last 12 months, the peach being at the last three consecutive places I’ve visited. Rillettes and Burrata, while not on the menu here, have also popped so frequently that they seem on track to become the next truffle fry and brioche bun.

I don’t, however, want to detract from the excellent food and service we received at LB, which, on the whole, seems to be what we’ve come to expect from new local ventures, along with charcuterie and pisco sours.

Lobster Bar
205 Richmond Road, E8 3NJ

April 20, 2016
Crossing the divide – Spitalfields to see crowdfunded adaptation of Malorie Blackman classic

The cast of Noughts and Crosses in rehearsal. Photograph: Purple Moon Drama

In 2013 the author Malorie Blackman became the UK’s first black Children’s Laureate.

A prolific reader in childhood, she said that for all the books she consumed she rarely came across a black child reflected in the pages.

This month, East London youth theatre group Purple Moon Drama is staging an adaptation of Blackman’s biggest selling title, equally eager to redress the issue of black representation.

Artistic director Cheryl Walker said she hadn’t realised how popular Noughts and Crosses was until she began working on the project.

“The response we’ve had from it has been really overwhelming. I wasn’t aware what a classic childhood text it is,” she says.

Noughts and Crosses is the first book in a bestselling series which has seen Blackman become a National Curriculum recommended author, and she was even name-checked in a Tinie Tempah number one record.

What drew Walker to the text were the young, black characters in leading roles.

Coupled with contemporary themes of terrorism, oppression, and social exclusion, Walker said she felt she could make the story important for her young cast.

“It’s not art unless you’ve got something to say”, she says, asserting that her 16 young performers are more than just actors – they want to have an impact on the communities they live in.

As an actor, Walker found credible black roles hard to find. So she set up Purple Moon two years ago with the intention of handing the reins back to performers so that they might better represent their own society.

Purple Moon offers drama programmes for young people 14-25 years old irrespective of socio-economic status.

Although Walker admits that the acting profession is unfairly dominated by those lucky enough to have been afforded the education, she says this need not be a barrier.

“It’s about empowerment” she says, “giving young people confidence, and proposing the idea that there are many options available to them – as actors or otherwise.”

Because the production is being crowd-funded online, Walker feels an even stronger imperative to represent those who are supporting the endeavour.

The company rehearses at a community centre in Shadwell, sitting cheek by jowl with a housing association.

“Crowdfunding is democracy at its best,” Walker says, “appealing to the community for support we have a duty to represent them”.

Noughts and Crosses
30 April – 1 May
Brady Arts Centre, 192–196 Hanbury Street, E1 5HU

April 20, 2016
Worth a butcher’s – Hill & Szrok restaurant review

“Easily the best steak either of us has had in the UK…” – the T-Bone at Hill & Szrok

Is it a butcher? Is it a restaurant? Actually it is both.

Hill & Szrok you might know as the cosy Broadway Market butcher-cum-restaurant on Broadway Market.

Its no-reservations table is invariably full of an evening, a fact that has always made me wonder if I will ever set foot inside.

But no more. For the team behind Hill & Szrok have opened a new pub and dining room in what was The Three Crowns near Old Street roundabout.

In keeping with a seemingly increasing trend for nose to tail eating, the team uses up every bit of the animal. The menu changes throughout the day as Alex Szrok, the chef, and his team work their way through the cuts.

All the meat is slow-grown, free range and taken entirely from sustainable farms across England.

The menu is small: a handful of starters, mains and sides, with a few specials on the blackboard that hangs above the open kitchen.

But we found the select choice ample. The smokiness of the roasted romanesco and tang of the pickled radicchio cut through the rich, soft goat’s curd beautifully.

Mussels made another welcome deviation from the meat theme, although they were slightly overpowered by the accompanying pancetta.

For mains we were delighted to have taken the waiter’s advice and ordered what the restaurant does best: big cuts of meat.

We shared a T-bone steak, which gives you both the sirloin and tender fillet cuts. It was easily the best steak either of us has had in the UK – juicy, flavoursome, pink the whole way along the cuts and falling apart in the mouth – and it rivalled any we had tried in South America.

Though the restaurant stands out for its meat, a great deal of attention was paid to the details, which makes a huge difference. The chips were spot on: piping hot and crispy, served with aioli, and the spring greens were fresh, flavoursome and nicely seasoned.

Vegetarians need not be deterred by the butcher’s reputation. The fish and vegetarian options were meals in themselves, not just back ups.

The sourcing and the quality of the ingredients are a cut above the rest. The publicity promised “a no fuss, maximum quality approach”. It achieved exactly that.

Hill & Szrok
8 East Rd, Old St, N1 6AD
hillandszrok.co.uk

April 19, 2016
Feline romantic – Homerton filmmaker releases debut feature Dead Cat

Michael (Sebastian Armesto) and Kristen (Sophia Dawnay) share a moment in Dead Cat

There was a time when brash romantic comedies ruled the cinema screens. But now, with the likes of Notting Hill and Bridget Jones’s Diary more than a decade old, it is a genre in decline.

But Sam Bern is trying to restore the rom-com to its former heights.

The Homerton-based filmmaker has just released his debut feature Dead Cat, about two childhood sweethearts who chance upon each other at the start of their thirties.

“Romcoms are important films and I think are really underrated,” says 34-year-old Bern, who lives in Homerton.

“At their heart they’re about two people who at the moment aren’t happy or aren’t functioning and it’s finding a way for them to be complete or happy again.”

Dead Cat is the story of Michael and Kristen, who have taken very different paths in life since they last knew each other.

“She’s sort of gone off and done everything and he’s sort of gone off and done nothing,” explains Bern.

“She’s got married, had a career and a kid and is going through a divorce, and he’s tried to become a photographer but it hasn’t quite been working.

“They run into each other at speed dating night so it’s like he sits down at a table and realises the person opposite him is someone he was very close to when he was a teenager, and they sort of come back into each others lives.”

With only a bunch of dysfunctional friends as allies, Michael and Kristen seek to discover whether this second bite of the romantic cherry is anything more than mere nostalgia.

The dead cat of the title is originally Michael’s hapless excuse for following Kristen around.

Much of the film is shot around Shoreditch, where Bern and the production team used to work making corporate films and music videos until the financial crisis hit.

“We were losing a lot of work so, as a group of filmmakers who had collaborated a lot before, we decided to make a feature film with people that we knew.”

Since starting work on the film in 2009, some of the cast have already made names for themselves: Sebastian Armesto was the lead in Star Wars 7 and Tom Mison has made a name for himself in the Fox series Sleepy Hollow.

“We all trained together at drama school and that’s how we knew each other,” Bern says.

Romantic comedies at their best are life-affirming, and at their worst can feel formulaic and cliché-ridden. The idea of there being a person out there who is ‘the one’ is a tired trope, Bern insists.

“It’s not that they have to be together it’s that they would be good together,” he says, explaining that each of the main characters provides the spark missing in the life of the other.

“He needs more real world and she needs more escapism and they sort of begin to find it in each other.”

“It’s like a mini resurrection you get to see these people get a second chance and find something in themselves that maybe they didn’t realise was there before.”

deadcatfilm.com

April 18, 2016
My Neighbours the Dumplings – restaurant review

My Neighbours the Dumplings’ frontage on Lower Clapton Road

As previous reviews attest, Clapton is now home to several quality Asian eateries. The newest among them is the puzzlingly named My Neighbours the Dumplings, which opened last month on Lower Clapton Road. As a dumpling fanatic, I waited impatiently for the opening, and apparently wasn’t alone in doing so: when we visited midweek, the restaurant was so bustling that a passing resident marvelled that she’d never seen such a busy place locally. It took us a few moments to get through the door as a decent crowd had assembled around the sake bar, seemingly just popping in for a drink.

MNTD has many things to recommend it. The general ambience is outstanding. The interior is thronged in custom-made light boxes, and the music is good, contributing to a celebratory vibe. The service is warm too. And the ingredients are clearly of a high quality, with meat sourced from the Rare Breed Meat Company. This is immediately apparent from the earthiness of the pork and lamb. It was nice to be offered ethically-sourced meat, which is not generally a fixture at regular dim sum parlours.

As dim sum is a brunch food, the food here isn’t strictly traditional. Diners do order from a tick box list, and the dishes are served in baskets, for sharing. The menu is carefully chosen, with classics like siu mai and sticky rice alongside pan-Asian fare such as a cucumber salad spiked with chilli and lemongrass, and a generous smattering of vegetarian options. We tried about eight dishes and although the general quality was high, some were more successful than others. The lamb and coriander potstickers were crispy without greasiness and the turnip cake with Chinese sausage and shiitake mushrooms was outstanding. The siu mai, however, weren’t firm enough, and the pork in the filling overpowered the prawn rather than hitting a balance. The prawn wontons were priced quite dearly at £5 (over a pound per piece), but were dry, with a thimble-sized portion of sauce.

Far and away the best dish was the whole steamed lemon sole in a coriander butter sauce, the coda to our meal. The fish, sourced from sustainable fishmonger Soleshare, was silky and buttery, with a delicate flavour that needed little adornment. Although the daily fish selection changes, I expect the quality will remain outstanding.

It took us far too long to receive and pay our bill, which came to £60 for two people with a soft drink and one sake cocktail. A shade too pricey for my tastes but I would definitely head there when hit by a dumpling craving – it’s local, ethical and the joyous atmosphere put us in a good mood.

My Neighbours the Dumplings
165 Lower Clapton Road, E5 8EQ
myneighboursthedumplings.com

April 15, 2016