East End Review

Category: STAGE

  • Crossing Jerusalem: stage review – ‘We’re all the same stinking family!’

    Chris Spyrides in Crossing Jerusalem at Park Theatre
    Chris Spyrides in Crossing Jerusalem at Park Theatre. Photograph: Habie Schwarz

    “We’re all the same stinking family!” exclaims Sergei, attempting to diffuse an argument between an Arab and a Jew at a birthday party. In Julia Pascal’s 2002 play Crossing Jerusalem everybody is connected. Arabs, Jews and Christians hailing from countless corners of the world live cheek by jowl in one of the oldest cities in the world.

    Playing at the Park Theatre in Finsbury Park until the end of August, Crossing Jerusalem is set in the Israeli capital during the second Intifada, or Palestinian uprising, when buses and cafés were the frequent target of bombings. So the Kaufmann family is justifiably on edge.

    Head of the household is Varda, a headstrong, workaholic, Jewish mother, who deals in real estate. Trudy Weiss as the matriarch is almost manic with paranoia, absently flitting from thought to thought, briefly breaking her stream of consciousness to criticise her daughter’s dress sense and her own lack of a grandchild.

    Only when she is crossed do we feel the full intensity of her feeling. “This is our country. If it goes to hell then we’ll go with it,” she declares. All of the characters at some point make reference to how dire the situation is.

    Everybody seems to have a claim to the disputed territory, and nobody a solution. So trauma is passed down through the generations with no suggestion of peace in sight. The state of Israel being as young as it is, the provenance of the homes Varda sells is inevitably called into question. An Arab family lived in their home before them – a neat metaphor for the wider political context.

    The design by Claire Lyth and Ben Cowens is simple and effective, summoning the remorseless heat and intense sunlight on blinding, white stone. The play takes place over the course of 24 hours, highlighting a sense of the ephemeral. The citizens of Jerusalem are forced to live in the moment because tomorrow may never come.

    Although Pascal says she had to omit some of the ‘Jewish-isms’ in the play for fear they would not be understood, there is still much laughter of recognition in the audience and a handful of great punchlines too. In an inversion of the famous quote, Varda remarks that Israel’s problem is that it suffers from: “Too much history. Not enough geography”.

    There is strong support from the younger members of the cast too. Adi Lerer is full-blooded and live throughout, and Alistair Toovey is particularly impressive as the vengeful and naïve Sharif. Varda’s husband Sergei battles persistently to diffuse the tensions rife within his family. And if his jollity and bad jokes grate to begin with, they find their mark eventually, with Chris Spyrides showing us the tenderness behind the character’s apparently offhand remarks.

    Crossing Jerusalem is at the Park Theatre, Clifton Terrace, N4 3JP until 29 August

  • The Misfit Analysis: a play to ‘push autism out of the ghetto’

    Misfit_Analysis_620x535

    Cian Binchy was the autism consultant for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime with the National Theatre. Or, as he puts it, he “taught the actor how to be autistic.”

    Unlike most consultants however, Binchy wasn’t paid. Instead, he received a photo with the cast – a perhaps only slightly less patronising version of a smiley face sticker, a symbol which Binchy’s’s own production, The Misfit Analysis, references to great effect.

    Why, in fact, disabled characters – or indeed any characters – are rarely played by disabled actors is one of the key concerns of Access All Areas – a Hackney-based performance company for adults with learning disabilities.

    I met Access All Areas producer Patrick Collier and Cian Binchy on the rooftop of the Lyric Hammersmith, where they were previewing The Misfit Analysis before its run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

    The production, a collaboration between Binchy and Access All Areas, is an attempt to both educate and challenge perceptions about life with autism. Perceptions like: “you’re autistic therefore you’re like Rainman or Who’s Eating Gilbert Grape?”, Collier adds.

    Along with various performance programmes for adults with learning disabilities, Access All Areas runs a Performance Making Diploma at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.

    Binchy is a graduate from this course and sings its praises; The Misfit Analysis was his final project. Other courses at ‘community colleges’, he says, had frequently been demeaning and dull.

    This course, on the other hand, “is not there to hand-hold people… it’s a hard course and it pushes people,” explains Collier. It’s about “showing the ability that is there, not the disability… ,[putting] a learning disabled artistic aesthetic on the UK theatre scene that doesn’t exist otherwise.”

    Binchy believes that the performance industry, while ostensibly “glamorous and sugar-coated”, is in fact a “very, very cruel place” – for anyone; and that people with learning disabilities are even more vulnerable to its harsh vagaries.

    Collier says that Access All Areas aims to level the playing field. They are piloting the idea of a ‘creative enabler’, he says, to provide “bespoke support” for performers with learning disabilities “navigating the very complex funding scene and theatre industry.”

    The Misfit Analysis is testimony to the talent of Cian Binchy and the production skills of Access All Areas. It’s about “understanding people as individuals,” he tells me, “to push autism out of the ghetto.”

    Inspired by Binchy’s experiences of “being dismissed a lot”, “feeling like an outsider, feeling like I don’t fit in… [of] being in a very dark kind of place,” he describes play as a picture of “how my mind works, going through a manifesto, a journey in my mind, not really going anywhere, the kind of balance between fantasy and reality.”

    “What do you hope people will gain from seeing your performance?” I ask. Binchy ponders for a while and responds wryly: “I was going to say that it’s about showing people that there’s nothing to be scared of, but I don’t think the play really shows that – I think it shows pretty much the opposite really!” We laugh. Comedy is a crucial tool in Binchy’s work.

    “I love doing satire and making it seem dead serious,” he tells me, “anything but comfortable; the audience are going to think ‘oh my goodness, what have I got myself in for?’” We laugh again, and Collier and Binchy go off to begin rehearsing.

    ow.ly/QfKZY

  • Play exploring radicalisation of young Muslims axed two weeks before opening

    Photograph: Helen Maybanks
    Photograph: Helen Maybanks

    A National Youth Theatre (NYT) play exploring the radicalisation of young Muslims and the lure of Islamic State scheduled to open in two weeks has been cancelled, leaving its cast claiming voices have been “silenced”.

    Homegrown, which aimed to explore the “stories and communities behind the headlines and the perceptions and realities of Islam and Muslim communities in Britain” was set to open at UCL academy in north London on 12 August.

    But the cast of 112 young actors and creative team were “shocked” when the NYT announced that the play would not go ahead.

    An NYT statement said: “After some consideration, we have come to the conclusion that we cannot be sufficiently sure of meeting all of our aims to the standards we set and which our members and audiences have come to expect.”

    Homegrown’s Director Nadia Latif and playwright Omar El-Khairy said the NYT’s statement contained “factual inaccuracies”.

    The pair insist the play was ahead of schedule, any concerns on content were “raised and discussed” and that the idea for the commission came from NYT’s artistic director.

    In a joint statement Latif and El-Khairy said: “The creative team and our cast of 112 young people were two weeks into our rehearsals, the culmination of six month process.

    “As well as the factual inaccuracies of NYT’s statement, we feel that, six days on from being told over email that show was pulled, it is bewildering that there are still unresolved questions regarding the cancellation of the show  two weeks before our scheduled opening. We feel that the reasons of this production being pulled down have not been transparent, openly addressed and fully answered.”

    The young cast took to social media to express their disappointment over the decision. Qasim Mahmood tweeted:

    The NYT confirmed that all purchased tickets for Homegrown would be fully refunded.

  • Homegrown – young, gifted and radicalised

    Photograph: Helen Maybanks
    Photograph: Helen Maybanks

    When three teenage girls from Bethnal Green ran away to join Isis earlier this year, the shocking news was splashed over all the front pages.

    CCTV pictures showed the girls, pupils at Bethnal Green Academy who were studying for their GCSEs, calming passing through security at Gatwick airport, leaving behind distraught families and friends.

    Now a new play called Homegrown, in part inspired by the story of the Bethnal Green teenagers, is setting out to tackle the subject of radicalisation among young Muslims and the lure of Isis.

    The site-specific piece will be set inside a school, The UCL Academy over in West London, and promises to be a spectacle, with a cast made up of 115 members of the National Youth Theatre.

    Director Nadia Latif and writer Omar El-Khairy wanted the production to be steeped in the views of a wide range of people, so part of the show uses verbatim interviews with East London residents.

    “We talked with everyone from local vicars, to shopkeepers to people in the park, and just asked them what the story meant to them,” says Latif.

    “We interviewed a couple that lived opposite Bethnal Green Academy, and they had one set of views on it. But there was a breadth of responses. It’s not dramatising the story but using it to ask what it takes to give up your life and leave like that.”

    What with Alecky Blythe’s Little Revolution and Jonathan Maitland’s An Audience with Jimmy Savile, there seems to be a real appetite in East London for verbatim theatre that offers a dramatic take on real life events.

    But the story of the teenagers from Bethnal Green Academy is arguably more sensitive, in that there are families to consider – and we still don’t really know what has happened to the girls. I ask how, if at all, this affected the play.

    “I’m not interested in ambulance chasing at all and we’re not trying to be sensationalist,” Latif responds. “This is something that’s been happening for a really long time, and we had the idea for the show before that had even happened.

    “But it gave us a point of reference to talk to audiences with. We wouldn’t have had the idea to go into the Bethnal Green community and talk to people otherwise, so it’s been a really good galvanising point and frame of reference.”

    But the main reason why that particular story captured the public imagination and remains intriguing is that the motivation behind the girls’ actions is so difficult to grasp. What answers does the play give?

    “I don’t think it’s a theatre maker’s job to have an answer,” Latif says. “I personally have an opinion, but I think any piece of theatre that has an answer is not only probably wrong, but is also unlikely to be a very good piece of theatre.

    “Theatre’s job is to tell a story and ask an audience questions, hoping they might leave and discuss that, and maybe we’ll show them a new way of looking at it. But it definitely doesn’t come to a conclusion and there’s no authentic conclusion to be had anyway.”

    Latif has worked on site-specific pieces before such, as Rupert Gould’s play about 9/11, Decade, and has experience with large-scale works.

    Homegrown, however, is the most ambitious production Latif has been involved with to date. But when I ask her how the production intends to use a school as its setting, she remains tight-lipped.

    “I think people will have to take a chance and be brave and know that they’re going to see some stuff that they’ve never seen before, but the rest is a mystery.”

    Homegrown
    12–29 August
    The UCL Academy
    Adelaide Road
    NW3 3AQ

    | image by helen maybanks

  • Crossing Jerusalem – a conflict of interest

    Chris Spyrides in Crossing Jerusalem at Park Theatre
    Chris Spyrides in Crossing Jerusalem at Park Theatre

    Jerusalem is a city on the edge. One of the oldest urban civilisations in the world, and a holy site for three major religions, it has in recent times become characterised by conflict.

    Control of the city is one of the central issues in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which remains not just a dispute over territory, but one of identity.

    Set against this backdrop is Julia Pascal’s 2003 play, Crossing Jerusalem, which is being remounted this month at the Park Theatre.

    Directed by the writer herself, the play takes place over a 24-hour period, capitalising on the ephemeral atmosphere in the city.

    “There is a sort of low-level anxiety in Israel constantly,” she says. “Love, sex and death are raw and present there all the time.”

    Pascal is an atheist, attending a non-religious state school in Manchester and ‘marrying out’ of Jewish society. But she still considers herself Jewish in a cultural sense.

    She wrote the Crossing Jerusalem following the Second Intifada, the Palestinian revolt against Israel that lasted from 2000 to 2005.

    Her research saw Pascal masking her Jewish identity and venturing into the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem, speaking French as a decoy to find out the truth of what life was like there.

    “Being a writer is like being a spy,” says Pascal. “As a ‘French person’ I was told things I never would have heard a as Jew.”

    This is where she discovered details of the relationships depicted in the piece.

    These include a Jewish woman’s love for her Arab servant, acts of horrific violence perpetrated by both sides, and unusual culture clashes such as the Christian Arab who will host anyone at his restaurant as long as they can afford to eat.

    It is these apparent inconsistencies and contradictions that Pascal always seeks to draw attention to in her writing. She tells me that the only Jewish plays in London are anti-Zionist and that the nature of the conflict in the Middle East is over-simplified, supporting an “easy political dogma”.

    Her considerable body of work declares a fearless appetite to challenge these received opinions and an eagerness to expose the complex and uncomfortable truth.

    And this play is no different. It is an insight into a strained and complex world of family ties, prejudice, religious obligation and above all humanity.

    As Pascal says: “The more we know about each other, the safer the world is.”

    Crossing Jerusalem
    4–29 August
    Park Theatre
    Clifton Terrace
    N4 3JP
    parktheatre.co.uk

  • Joseph Fritzl-inspired play at Hackney Showroom makes light of dark subject matter

    The cast of Clap Hands
    The cast of Clap Hands

    Eccentric playwright Aaron Hubbard comes from a strong TV, film and theatre background, and is known for his commitment to gallows humour. His new play Clap Hands explores the darkly funny side of love-hate sibling relationships, based on his reaction to the disturbing story of the Fritzl family. The production zooms in on the trials and tribulations two siblings endure as they are locked in the basement of their home by their mother, away from the prying eyes of their community. Under the immense strain of their adoration and hatred in equal measure, Ana and Gogol begin to plot their escape, and maybe even murder. Exploring themes of responsibility, sibling rivalry and the dark side of love, it promises to be a truly challenging piece of theatre. Desperate, deviant and dreamlike, Clap Hands is about to hit Hackney Showroom with a vengeance.

    What three words would you choose to describe your work?
    Soothing existential dread.

    How has your background brought you to this point?
    Clap Hands is certainly not representative of my own childhood. That is to say, my parents never locked me in the basement or held me against my will. Although I did once barricade myself in my room and do a poo on the floor.

    Where did this complex story come from?
    I watched a lot of Columbo as a child, which certainly had an influence on Clap Hands. I got very caught up with the Josef Fritzl case a few years ago, which also informed the play. A key character in the play – Cruz Gentle – was inspired by an episode of the KCRW UnFictional podcast where Alex Schmidt investigated the mysterious life and disappearance of Little Julian Herrera, a musician on the East LA Chicano music scene in the 1950s and 1960s. It’s an amazing story. I won’t spoil it, but I really recommend downloading the podcast.

    Why does dark humour appeal to you?
    Gosh, that’s a hard question. Clap Hands is a post-Fritzl narrative: its subject matter is domestic imprisonment. Gallows humour is a coping mechanism that has evolved to help us process monstrous acts like this. The humour in Clap Hands grew naturally from the characters and the world they inhabit.

    What do you think it means to endure a relationship?
    Probably best to ask my wife. Let me see if I can find the keys to the basement…

    What’s next for you?
    I am currently writing a play about Otherkin – people who identify as non-human. They have formed a dedicated internet subculture, which means I can finally justify spending all day on Tumblr in the name of research.

    Clap Hands is at Hackney Showroom, 17 Amhurst Terrace, E8 2BT from 14–25 July hackneyshowroom.com

  • A Land Without People: founding of Israel is the focus of new play

    Roy Khalil playing Khalil al-Sakakini and Elena Voce playing his daughter Sala.
    Roy Khalil playing Khalil al-Sakakini and Elena Voce playing his daughter Sala. Photograph: Andrew Bailey

    Back in my school days, history lessons seemed either to be about the World Wars or Henry VIII and his six wives.

    So speaking to Brian Rotman about his new play A Land without People, a staging of the historical events that led to the declaration of the State of Israel in 1948, I have to admit to being on shaky ground.

    “British people know nothing about this,” he says, to my awkward silence on the other end of the phone.

    “They say: ‘Do you mean pre-Israel was in the hands of the Brits? And it was the way the Brits dealt with it that produced the historical narrative?”

    It might be wise to do some cursory Wikipedia-ing before going to see Rotman’s play, which premieres at the Courtyard Theatre this month.

    The play centres on three crucial episodes in the run-up to the declaration of the State of Israel on 14 May 1948, with the main characters all historical figures.

    But Rotman, a retired university maths professor who lives between London and the United States, insists the play is driven by events not characters, with modern events in Israel the play’s inspiration.

    Rotman returned to London last summer during the Israeli operation in the Gaza Strip, which according to the UN resulted in 2251 (mostly Gazan) deaths.

    “I realised immediately that my daily reading of the New York Times at breakfast had not served me well in terms of informing me what was going on,” says Rotman.

    “So out of anger and being deeply disturbed at what this state was doing I started writing this play. And it became an historical play.”

    Rotman grew up in a Jewish family during the 1940s and 50s. His parents owned a confectionary shop on Brick Lane where he spent his formative years.

    “I had a traditional upbringing in a Jewish household and had a Bar Mitzvah, but I rebelled and just became secular English middle class.”

    Researching the play made Rotman aware of campaigns groups such as Jews for Justice for Palestinians (JFJFP), which opposes the policy of Israel towards the Palestinian territories.

    “Because of this play I discovered there was a split in the Jewish population caused by Israel, and that made me very interested in who would be sympathetic to my response.

    “I feel that with this play I’m putting my shoulder to the wheel, saying this is the historical truth of how the country was founded. People can make of it what they want.”

    A Land Without People is at The Courtyard, Bowling Green Walk, 40 Pitfield Street, N1 6EU
    thecourtyard.org.uk
    9 July – 1 August

  • Playwright questions her Jewish roots in This Is Not The End

    Playwright Rose Lewenstein
    Playwright Rose Lewenstein

    Last year, for the first time in her life, Rose Lewenstein threw a Passover party. Fuelled by her own curiosity and frustrated at people constantly asking her if she was Jewish, she wanted to know what she was missing out on.

    Together with a friend, the 29-year-old read some Hebrew prayers found on the internet, broke Matzah and ate chopped liver and chicken soup made with ingredients from the Kosher section at Waitrose.

    Born in Mile End Hospital and brought up on Chatsworth Road, the playwright says the real answer to where she came from is in fact “all over”.

    Her new play Now This Is Not The End, which opens at the Arcola this month, explores some of those feelings of disorientation from one’s roots, family and homeland.

    Three of Rose’s grandparents were born outside of the UK and although her parents have Jewish ancestry, they are not religious, nor do they practice Jewish customs.

    Her name does indeed suggest a Jewish connection but for Lewenstein, heritage manifests itself more like “a niggling feeling that I don’t really know where my home is”.

    Her play, starring Brigit Forsyth, concerns three generations of women from the same family who are separated by geography and their relationship to their own heritage.

    Lewenstein asserts that the play is not autobiographical but rather, like herself “the characters are searching for something they weren’t brought up with”.

    Having begun her professional career on stage as an actor, singer, and dancer, Lewenstein trained at the Brit School and the prestigious Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.

    But it was getting her play read at the Royal Court Theatre which was the turning point. After that she found herself abandoning auditions, instead choosing to stay at home and work on her own plays and occasionally as a journalist.

    A recent piece of hers for Vice magazine detailed the shocking statistics around women professionals in the theatre.

    A poll taken on a random evening in the West End found only 5 per cent of shows were written by women. In real terms this amounted to just one play and one writer – Agatha Christie’s Mousetrap.

    Discouraged by the statistics, her response was ‘What’s the point?’ but gradually that feeling of despair galvanised itself into productivity.
    “I really wanted to write a play that puts women centre stage,” she says. “Where they are not wives or daughters, but at the centre of the drama.”

    Now This is Not the End is at Arcola Theatre, 24 Ashwin Street, E8 3DL until 27 June.
    arcolatheatre.co.uk

  • Play about Jimmy Savile is an ‘incredibly important story’

    Alastair McGowan as Jimmy Savile. Photograph: Helen Maybanks
    Alastair McGowan as Jimmy Savile. Photograph: Helen Maybanks

    No subject, it seems, is too raw for Jonathan Maitland. After using drag to depict Margaret Thatcher in his debut play Dead Sheep this year, the journalist turned playwright is now tackling the most notorious sex abuser of recent history: Jimmy Savile. An Audience with Jimmy Savile is based on real events, uses almost verbatim dialogue, and stars the renowned impersonator and actor Alastair McGowan. While the play might sound more frightening than entertaining, Maitland insists it is an important story that needs to be heard.

    Why did you set out to write play about Jimmy Savile?
    I’ve been a journalist for 30 years and I think it’s an incredibly important story because of how it impacts on the way we deal with allegations of abuse, our cravenness before celebrity and the libel laws. My first instinct was to cover it journalistically on TV, but after Dead Sheep I realised you can tell a story more effectively and get to a greater truth (that’s a bit of a cliché but it’s true) by doing a dramatised form of journalism. It was a revelation to me that you can get to truth more effectively by using a little bit of drama.

    What is the play’s narrative focus?
    There are two bits to the narrative: a TV show with a This is Your Life-style audience, where the great and the good and famous line up to praise Savile, and he acts the fool and the clown; and the other, more important narrative is following the struggle of someone he’s abused to be believed, to be listened to and to find justice. It’s based on real life as there was a woman who tried to confront him, and this takes it to that next logical step which shows her getting an audience with him and confronting him. The play’s two key themes are: how did he get away with it, and how do you come back from the abuse and not being believed, which was for some people the worst bit. Ultimately we’re trying to make a play about forgiveness and redemption and hope and renewal, something I hope will come through very strongly by the end.

    What makes theatre the right medium for tackling the subject of Jimmy Savile?
    There wasn’t a camera there when young women or girls were telling their parents what happened in private. You can’t get that across in a TV documentary. At best you might have someone in silhouette talking about it. But in a play you can recreate what happened in private, which is an incredible eyeopener and gobsmacking for the audience. You can also in a play – which we have done – recreate a police interview with Savile, which happened about six years ago in which he runs rings around them. It’s an incredible gift for dramatisation and an incredible public service to bring to life the moment where he got off the hook. I think theatre’s more immediate and more in your face literally. And it can be more powerful.

    How did you write the play?
    It’s not 100 per cent verbatim, but if there’s such a thing as ‘part verbatim’, then it’s that. It’s based on police interview transcripts, public inquiry reports, interviews with abuse victims, YouTube – which is very useful – and books by and about him. It takes quotes from him and it’s based on real events. Some of dialogues have been imagined, though I’m very happy that he either said or could have said everything in the play.

    And part of the research was that you spoke to and consulted with abuse victims?
    Yes, and I’ve met with Peter Saunders, founder of NAPAC [The National Association for People Abused in Childhood]. He’s very supportive and if the show makes a profit a substantial proportion will go to his organisation. He understands what we’re trying to do and he’s called us an important part of the conversation that we need to be having about abuse.

    Is it true that you have received a “tsunami of abuse” about the play?
    It wasn’t a tsunami, it was more of a small trickle. But yes I got a few insults on Twitter and I engaged with them all and explained what I was doing it for, and a lot of critics became supporters once I’d explained it, which was very gratifying.

    What does Alastair McGowan bring to the part of Jimmy Savile?
    He’s very compelling, he’s very unnerving, he’s very skilled at portraying the full gamut of the personality: the entertaining, eccentric side, but also more importantly the horrible, nasty, dark and psychopathic side.

    What do you say to people who think it is ‘too soon’ for a play about Jimmy Savile?
    He died four years ago, and there’s not a flag that goes up to say right it’s now okay to do a play or TV drama about Jimmy Savile. I think you have to take the opinions of those who are most closely affected by it, and that is the victims. And the ones I’ve spoken to don’t think it’s too soon at all. In fact their only issue with timing is that this story and their stories weren’t told sooner. There have been 44 NHS reports, four police reports and God knows how many articles and documentaries, so now seems the right time to try and make sense of it all in one piece of dramatic journalism.

    An Interview with Jimmy Savile is at Park Theatre, Clifton Terrace, N4 3JP from 10 June – 11 July.

  • Crouch, Touch, Pause, Engage – stage review: between a ruck and a hard place

    The cast of Crouch, Touch, Pause Engage. Photograph: Robert Workman
    Tackling discrimination: Crouch, Touch, Pause Engage. Photograph: Robert Workman

    In 2007 the Welsh rugby legend Gareth Thomas published the first of his two autobiographies. In the introduction he writes “As soon as I was made captain of Wales, I pledged to be honest to myself and honest with everyone around me.”

    Two years later he came out as gay and has since called the book “one big lie from beginning to end”.

    Thomas’s journey is re-told in Crouch, Touch, Pause, Engage, a new play by Robin Soans created by Out of Joint Theatre Company and the National Theatre of Wales. Using text from real-life interviews, the play sees six actors play Thomas, who is known by his childhood nickname ‘Alfie’, with each taking their turn to sport the Welsh jersey and catch the rugby ball, which indicates a change of actor.

    Thomas says he wasn’t scared that people would reject him because of his sexuality, but because “suddenly you turn around and tell them you’ve been lying to them for twenty years”.

    As is so often the case, his best friend Compo had known all along. But his wife and parents hadn’t – and nor had his fans.

    But it’s not just a play about Thomas. As he suffers the taunts and jeers of the crowd, and his secret gradually becomes public knowledge, we also hear the testimony of a young girl whose own taunts and jeers drove her to edge of the void.

    Darcy, played with tenderness and humour by Lauren Roberts, is a character created from interviews with two suicide attempt survivors from Bridgend, South Wales.

    Both parties live to fight another day and even meet to share their experiences, Alfie confessing: “There’s so much of me I see in you.”

    The show comes to a close with a demonstration of the scrum – the inspiration for the title – the forwards huddling together before crouching to engage their opponents.

    The pressure and excitement of various big match encounters punctuate the story as it unfolds and we are frequently presented with a huge gladiator of a man – strong and brave, and totally unequipped for the labours that face him.

    Crouch, Touch, Pause, Engage is at the Arcola Theatre, 24 Ashwin Street, E8 3DL until 20 June.
    arcolatheatre.co.uk