Walking down Well Street in Hackney, you’d be forgiven for missing the Freed of London ballet shoe factory. But according to the filmmaker Jack Flynn, inside the factory lies “another world”.
Established in 1929, Freed of London manufactures pointe shoes for dancers globally – from young beginners to prima ballerinas. The small factory produces 48,000 standard and 112, 000 bespoke shoes annually – that’s 700 shoes every day.
But who are the people working the machines? This question captivated filmmakers Jack Flynn and Nick David who, in a four-minute, beautifully-crafted short film, tell the stories behind the story of Freed.
“We love the honesty of the film,” says David. “It was a very simple approach, but that’s when you get the magic.”
“Initially we wanted to document the manufacturing process,” adds Flynn, “but what became apparent after a couple of visits, were the stories of the people who worked there.”
Every worker has their own ‘maker’s stamp’ – “mine’s a crown,” says one – and all express a strong sense of pride in their craft. “Not many people can do the work,” explains one employee.
The workshop seems worlds way from the pristine theatres of world-class ballerinas, yet its rhythmic contraptions are almost dancingly hypnotic. “The contrast between ballet and the factory floor was really obvious,” says Jack, “yet we saw a real connection with the sheer physicality of both disciplines.”
In other ways, however, there is a disconnect between the crafts. One shoemaker has been in the business for 25 years, but is yet to go to the ballet. “I’ve seen it on telly,” he says, “but I haven’t gone to theatres or nothing like that. I don’t get the time to.”
Freed’s workers are undoubtedly devoted. Tony Collins started work in 1969 and has been there ever since. Sheila Goodman met her husband of 35 years at the factory. They’ve been working together for 40 years. “We didn’t tell no one that we was getting married!” she recalls. “We got married on the Saturday and on the Monday we were back into work. We didn’t even have a honeymoon!”
The factory’s walls are testament to the spirit and diversity of its workers. One wall is covered in football memorabilia and another cats and Hindu iconography. “I’m curious as to who’s wearing my shoes,” muses one worker. “Without the audience there’d be no dancers, without the dancers there’d be no makers. Life goes round in a circle… It’s unlike anything else.”
I make it to Foyles at 6.30pm on the dot to find a queue spilling from an excited throng in the auditorium. The line runs down the stairs and out into the cafe, where a second – non-priority – queue begins. “It’s the busiest book signing I can remember,” a flustered employee tells me.
The heaving crowds have turned out in force to pick up a copy of street artist Stik’s eponymously-titled new book and get it signed by the mysterious man himself – who, perched on a raised platform, is donning a paint-spattered shirt, dark shades and a black leather cap.
His heavy, rose-coloured publication documents a curiously affecting, politically-motivated body of work that relies primarily on basic stick figures. It’s a portfolio, so to speak, that first started to appear on Hackney’s walls more than a decade ago and has since spread across the globe.
A few days later, we chat on the phone and he’s as genial as he was with fans earlier in the week. “It was incredible”, he says of the event. “I was only supposed to be doing an hour, but in the end I stayed there for about three.”
A Child Watching Over a Sleeping Parent by Stik
Softly spoken and oozing enthusiasm, Stik is keen to talk about his connection with this publication’s sister title, the Hackney Citizen. Roughly half a decade ago, whilst living in St Mungo’s Hostel on Mare Street, he began a fruitful collaboration with the paper, which, he explains, gave him a structure that would eventually lead to his first book.
“I’d speak to the editors and we’d pick a local news story. I would find a specific place relevant to that story, do a mural and then I’d write a brief column explaining why that painting was there and what news issue it was relating to,” he says.
“Doing that monthly piece really made me think about street art on a much deeper level and what sort of impact I could have on the community – how I could represent my community through art. So that was the catalyst for the book.”
The original publications make for an interesting stand-alone project. The first he sends across to me includes an image of Pole Dancer, a 2010 piece scrawled outside a strip club in Great Eastern Street. The work portrays one of his signature black-and-white stick people swinging, eyes closed,
around a pole.
“That was in reference to Hackney Council’s move to clamp down on what they deemed indecent sex clubs,” he says. “They cut out a lot of the healthy, consenting adult subculture in Hackney under the guise of trying to curb sex trafficking… So, yeah, I did that piece to sort of celebrate the kink culture and just draw reference to what
was happening.”
Pole Dancer by Stik, published in the Hackney Citizen (November, 2010)
Other examples of Stik’s work that were produced during that time include Lovers, Waiting Room and Children of Fire; these were done in response to the council’s eviction of a Dalston Lane ‘queer squat’, cuts to the NHS, and the “civil unrest… triggered by the police killing of Mark Duggan”, respectively. He goes on to explain that, as well as conveying a wider social message, each mural contains a narrative personal to him.
Of Lovers, which shows two androgynous figures embracing against a red background, he says: “The squat was a safe house for people from oppressive regimes, for queer and transgender people who were not safe in their home towns or home countries… There was no real service like it within the mainstream infrastructure – this was something that was lacking.
“But it was also a place which I had a personal connection with. I belonged to that community, you know, that’s me in the painting. A lot of it is my story – it’s my experience of being marginalised, of being oppressed and how that relates to society at large.”
Climate Change, by Stik
It’s interesting that Stik describes his work as a means of telling his own story. Outside of his art, biographical details are sketchy. His email moniker is simply Stik Person and he stresses a set of “strict rules” when it comes to answering questions about his past – it’s not even known where he originates from.
He does, however, talk relatively freely about his time in Hackney, which, going by artistic evidence, began sometime around 2003. He explains that when he first arrived he spent time squatting in London Fields Lido, during the period leading up to its renovation and reopening in the mid-2000s.
“I used to live in the changing rooms there,” he says. “I slept in an art shipping case that I’d salvaged from Momart, the art shipping company. It was a plywood packing case that according to its label once contained a Kandinsky and was destined for, I think, Claudia Schiffer, somewhere in Hollywood.”
At this point, I’m not sure if he’s pulling my leg, but he goes on to describe what sounds like a dark, difficult and deeply informative period of his life.
“I was homeless for many years and I was very cold and hungry for a long time,” he says, “but I would always find abandoned buildings. I didn’t have any reason to sleep in doorways in Mare Street because I always managed to somehow get through the door.”
A Couple Hold Hands in the Street, by Stik. Photograph: Claude Crommelin
He refers back to the Pole Dancer piece: “It’s very personal to me. When you’re homeless you find all sorts of ways of making a living and I’ve had to make ends meet through all sorts of things. That’s why I identify with the struggle of sex workers in Hackney and the stigmatisation that they’ve had put on them.”
The more he talks, the more enigmatic and fascinating he becomes; the more complicated his work is. He describes with zeal his many experiences painting abroad – the highlight, for me, being a set of wind turbines he worked on in Norway – and what the future holds now the world is interested.
“I feel very warmly embraced by the communities that I have worked with,” he says. “I feel very grateful as an artist for that experience. It’s an exciting journey – it’s a huge responsibility, but I do feel that it’s my responsibility as an artist to respond to the current political state of affairs.”
Stik’s book, which forms one mammoth project, is a triumph. His pared-down, sublimely minimal approach delivers touching snippets of human experience and explores private city space in a dramatically public manner. He’s both engaged and engaging; it’s easy to understand his fast-rising popularity in the art scene.
As we tie up our conversation, Stik makes an obscure reference to Somerset, and when I ask more he shrugs it off and mutters something about friends and some work he’s got going on there.
I can’t help but feel it’s a hint at a previous life; another scrap of the obscure biography he’s been scribbling on walls everywhere. I can’t be sure, but it’s fun to speculate.
Stik is published by Century. RRP: £20. ISBN: 9781780893334
Stik’s Print Launch is on 24 September from 5-8pm at the Education Centre, Homerton University Hospital, Homerton Row, E9 6SR
The Yard in Hackney Wick has been voted the second most popular theatre in London.
In an online poll conducted by Time Out, The Yard ranked above the likes of Shakespeare’s Globe and The Young Vic, only to be pipped to the top spot by the National Theatre.
In response to its success, founder and artistic director Jay Miller states that The Yard remains a theatre outside of the establishment.
“We don’t listen to rules. We don’t make dogma. We always try to make something new because that’s what this world needs,” he said.
Recent awards for The Yard include the 2014 Off West End Theatre Awards Special Panel Award for Outstanding Achievement and the 2013 Empty Space Peter Brook/Mobius Award for supporting emerging artists.
This year Beyond Caring, Alexander Zeldin’s play about zero-hours contracts, became the second play developed by The Yard to be transferred to the National Theatre.
Do you dare enter the Funhouse? Illustration: Felix Decombat
Funhouse is a new quarterly for young writers and illustrators, which is launching early this month. Founded by Hackney-based editor Oliver Zarandi and designer Fran Marchesi, the magazine will publish stories and illustrations that would be less likely to appear in the more established literary venues.
The first issue is concerned with the body, with a fittingly fleshy colour running throughout its 94 pages. Think not graceful nudes or svelte athletes; these bodies tend toward the grotesque, with many of the stories feeling their way into disease and bodily transformations. The illustrations feature a series of people castrating each other, being punched in the head, missing noses.
The mag’s contributors include writers such as Richard Barnett, author of The Sick Rose, Patty Cottrell, Jason Schwartz and East London based comic artist Alex Widdowson. The inaugural issue’s front cover is by Will Laren who frequently contributes to Vice.
Moving forward, the Funhouse team is hoping to attract more East London writers and illustrators for the next issue in the aim of creating a local literary community. I caught up with Zarandi a few weeks before the first issue was due to come out and asked him the magazine’s genesis.
Where did the idea for Funhouse come from?
Funhouse has been an idea for a long time, but only in the last nine months has it really come to life. The name comes from a story by John Barth – ‘Lost in the Funhouse’ – and there was one point where I actually contacted John Barth. I emailed the university he used to teach at and they put me in touch with him. He said it sounded “fine” and said I should talk to his agent. Obviously, there was no reply. The whole Barth thing made me change my mind. It made me think maybe I was doing something old-fashioned. Sometimes literature and ‘art’ magazines can be very off-putting – too serious, too much text, not enough focus on younger writers, or events where you watch people read long poems for hours on end. Fran Marchesi and I wanted to make a magazine of writing and illustration that was respectful to the artists but still has its tongue firmly in cheek. We wanted Funhouse to be a bit naughty and print work that was offbeat, dark and funny.
Why a magazine? We heard a rumour that ‘print is dead’.
To say print is dead is a bit of a limiting statement. It’s like saying novels are dead, theatre is dead or film is dead. I think the reason I chose print as opposed to something digital is out of respect for the writers. As a writer myself, I would always prefer to have something tangible, something special. A lot of writers have work online, but then maybe a year or two later that link is dead. Fran and I wanted to create something beautiful. There’s a lot of illustration in Funhouse too, so again, we want people to actually pick up this magazine, to feel it. There are a lot of great print magazines and publishers out there right now – places like Test Centre, And Other Stories, The Alarmist, Hexus – who are all creating great print work.
What were your inspirations and what direction do you hope to take the magazine in?
For our first issue, we’ve definitely taken a lot of inspiration from American literature and publishers. A particular influence is Tyrant Books and their editor Giancarlo DiTrapano, who published New York Tyrant and, eventually, Preparation for the Next Life by Atticus Lish. It is an amazing book and Di Trapano did it his way. I’ve got a lot of respect for that. Funhouse has been a long, difficult journey. In the beginning, it was going in a lot of directions. It just wasn’t right.
But then I met Fran who designed the magazine, and we work really well together. We understand what works and we see things in the long term. Fran’s design is fantastic and we aim to publish longer works – novels, short story collections for example – in the next two years. We would like to gain a following first, however, and build relationships with writers and artists. When you look at somewhere like Galley Beggar Press and the great work they produce, it’s really encouraging.
Will there be cross-chat between the illustrations and the stories in each issue?
Each story will have an illustration to it, yes, but we also dedicate entire sections to artists too. We aim to give enough space to both text and illustration so the work can breathe. We are looking to change the colour scheme and ‘theme’ of each issue, too.
Who will your readers be and why will they read Funhouse? Funhouse will appeal to those who love good quality print, peculiar stories, punchy illustration and dark humour. It’s not just a magazine for one particular set of people, either. We are really interested in publishing writers from different backgrounds and different interests – not just writers, but comic book artists, internet poets and so on. We encourage people to just email us and talk to us about any work they have.
What would be the first sentence of your dream review of the magazine?
“Funhouse has a lot of balls. And arms, and ears, and other body parts too.”
Sad Tommy by Andrew Salgado. Courtesy of Beers Contemporary
The current exhibition at Beers Contemporary, The Fantasy of Representation, combines emerging painters with familiar masters in a show that celebrates the representational and figurative strand of contemporary art.
Curated by Andrew Salgado, the exhibition argues that figuration, the painting of things, can be as inventive and avant-garde as any example of abstraction (the painting of forms, shapes and colours). Here Salgado displays the work of some 20 artists, and his own, in support of his argument.
In the accompanying essay Salgado writes against the assumption that although representational painters should be influenced by abstraction, abstraction has no responsibility to take on the lessons of those painters who paint objects, people and landscapes.
The art historian Edward Lucie-Smith notes in support that abstract work can be just as predictable and tiresome as any picture of a river or tree. They are right, of course, and it is unjust to assume that just because an artist chooses to include representational content in their work that it is less advanced or adventurous than the work of an abstract painter.
Suregum by Scott Anderson. Courtesy of Beers Contemporary
The combination of the techniques of abstraction with carefully chosen subject matter and recognisable references has produced some of the most interesting work of the 20th and 21st century. This point is explicitly made by the inclusion of a Francis Bacon sketch on paper (Head Drawing), a distended head that illustrates exactly how engaging the balance between technique and content can be.
The material qualities of the paintings on show are one of the most immediately striking aspects of the exhibition, and it is fascinating to examine the craters, peaks and thickness of the paint. Looking into the Sun (Kings Blue) (2015) by Daniel Crews-Chubb is such a dense lather of materials pasted to the canvas that I found myself staring at it for quite some time.
But somewhat ironically for a show on representation, the content of the painting barely registered over its material qualities. This is the Achilles heel of the exhibition, and perhaps even of modern representational painting in general.
Hand for Horace Greeley by Aaron Holz. Courtesy of Beers Contemporary
Often the content (what the painting is of) is really quite boring. Doe-eyed women, topless men with a far-away stare in their eyes, the light on a lake – these things feel overdone and far less interesting than how they are painted or exist as objects. Surely truly great representational work, like Bacon’s, exists in the interaction between what is represented and how it is portrayed.
Too much of the work here falls down at the level of content. The clumsy religious theme in Sverre Bjertnes’ The New State (2015), for example, is so overdone that it becomes very difficult to appreciate the skill involved in his painterly technique. Its Hieronymus Bosch-esque landscape, with flat and stretched purple hills cluttered with crucifixes, had me questioning what I could possibly be expected to draw from it. Haven’t I seen these images of psychedelic and unsettling Christianity a hundred times before? What the paintings are of often feels secondary or superficial when comparison to how they are painted.
I think that some of this triteness stems from the unwavering focus on gallery painters, when there is all around us (especially in East London) much more interesting representational work. Walking to the exhibition, I passed street art that I found more poignant, political and urgent than many of the canvases on display. Despite the small size of the exhibition, it could have included so much more that engages exactly with those concerns it identifies – the way that representation can be just as (or even more) current than abstraction.
For all that the exhibition does correctly, and the interesting work it includes, it strays into cliché at points, and rarely looks outside the walls of the gallery or the cliquish art world, towards work that might be just as able to challenge the supremacy of the abstract.
Benedict Cumberbatch as Hamlet in the Barbican’s production of the Shakespeare play. Photograph: Johan Persson
It may be the magnetic pull of its lead actor that made this the fastest-selling theatre show in UK history, but in the Barbican’s Hamlet Benedict Cumberbatch is just one of the heavy hitters in a knock-out production.
Lyndsey Turner’s highly-anticipated (and already controversial) production of one of Shakespeare’s most often-performed plays is ambitious, visually lavish and perfectly-pitched. Ciaran Hinds’ Claudius, Anastasia Hille’s Gertrude, Jim Norton’s Polonius and Karl Johnson as the gravedigger are just some of the highlights in an ensemble that bring fresh humour, irony and energy to some of the most well-worn lines in the English language.
They’re supported by yet another impressive set design from Es Devlin, whose extraordinary work you might recognise from previous London shows including The Master and Margarita (also at the Barbican), Chimerica and The Nether, all the way to Jay Z concerts. The music, a powerful part of the show, comes from renowned producer and composer Jon Hopkins, plus Luke Halls on video, Jane Cox on lighting and Christopher Shutt on sound. It’s an electric performance that chews you up and spits you out three hours later.
The best thing about Benedict Cumberbatch in this role is that you don’t feel like you’re watching Benedict Cumberbatch. Despite reports his fans flew from as far as LA to queue for a chance of picking up tickets and his (now virally-shared) appeal to audiences not to film the performance, his celebrity doesn’t overshadow the play.
Maybe it’s because he manages to stay relatively private in the public eye, which is something that made watching Jude Law in the same role quite distracting for example. Maybe it’s because the sheer scale of the production means it hangs less on its lead. At any rate he delivers a powerful, very human and at times hilarious performance in what many see as a milestone role in an actor’s career.
Dressed in scruffy student clothes, sitting alone listening to Nature Boy on his record player as the play opens, he plays a very relatable Prince of Denmark, wrestling with the death of his father and sudden remarriage of his mother to his uncle Claudius. The uncle who killed his father and whom he will spend the rest of the play finding the resolve to take revenge upon.
It’s an energetic performance, as Hamlet shapeshifts with agility from self-loathing despair to rage to comedy. His antic disposition, the method to his ‘madness’, is first manifest with him dressed as a toy soldier and marching on the banquet table. It’s very funny, hinging in many ways on the comic chemistry with Polonius, which is perfectly timed.
During his many speeches there’s clever choreography and lighting to make it seem like the rest of a scene is carrying on in slow motion while he performs soliloquies in the spotlight, which means the play loses none of its momentum. His soliloquies have, of course, been at the centre of heated debate in theatreland over the past weeks.
The play’s multiple re-writes and length (in full it’s four hours and 4,000 lines) mean most productions cut it down, making the text more than usually open to interpretation. Not too much though, it seems, with the production u-turning on its experiment with putting Hamlet’s famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy into Act 1.
One of the biggest stars of the show has to be Es Devlin’s set. It takes advantage of the sheer size and scope of the Barbican’s performance space to house two-storey royal palace rooms at Elsinore in which the play opens. There are striking visualisations of the “unnatural” death of the rightful king and imagery of corruption that underpin the play, including entire blanched trees with dead white flowers hanging suspended upside-down over the new King’s banquet table and dead creepers choking the staircase.
In the second act the entire stage scene is demolished, making Ophelia’s grief and unravelling wits all the more poignant as she treads barefoot in the smoking remains of the castle. Later the same rubble mountain landscape becomes a graveside during the ‘Alas, poor Yorick’ scene and a bleak battle camp as Fortinbras’ men march toward Elsinore. The use of video projection and lighting is particularly striking here, played out across Devlin’s epic designs.
There are moments of breath-taking stagecraft, including the tumultuous close of Act 3 and the bloodbath of the fencing match that will see most remaining characters die. The last, especially, is a masterpiece of choreography and stagecraft that sees the cast swirling in a whirl of light and shadow as Hamlet finally avenges his father.
A triumph all told.
Hamlet is at The Barbican, Silk Street, EC2Y 8DS until 25 October
Each time Dionysos appears on stage in the Almeida Theatre’s new production of the Bakkhai there is a crackle of electricity. A dangerous flash and fizz of escaped current that threatens to shock the nearest heathen into adoration.
Ben Whishaw is the ethereal Dionysos, who states in his opening address “I intend to thrill you, Thebes.” Fresh off the boat, his mission is to convert Greece to his own brand of ecstatic worship just like he converted Asia before them.
The only man that stands in his way is Pentheus, Thebes’ intolerant ruler. Played by Bertie Carvel with conservative restraint, Pentheus displays all of the ignorance and disregard of contemporary politicians in wanting to put down “this Bakkhic nonsense” with the minimum of fuss.
But he doesn’t know what he is dealing with, and rapidly becomes the victim of his own gnawing curiosity.
In keeping with the tradition of 400 BCE, three actors alternate through the main character roles, whilst a ten-strong female chorus support, cajole and critique their decisions in song, chant and lamentation.
Anne Carson’s adaptation of Euripides’ classic text is clean, accessible and totally honest. Where there is no English translation for the original Greek, the character declares it.
Dionysos admits he is known by a different name in every land he has conquered thus far, his mercurial essence impossible to capture definitively within the confines of language.
In performance, the simplicity of Carson’s text has the power to both articulate huge emotions and sensations and equally be thrown away.
Both Whishaw and Carvel play on the sarcasm and informality that characterises so much of contemporary conversation, Whishaw using language to wield great authority and depict puckish giddiness, to torment and to tease.
Because the language is so plain, the audience tunes in on any glimmer of a double meaning. When Pentheus appeals to us – his courtiers – to support him in maintaining order in the land he governs, we giggle at his double entendres.
Just as Dionysus would have us do, we corrupt his words for our own pleasure and turn all to sex.
Pentheus condemns us for disobeying him, but as an audience of voyeurs we are already followers of Dionysos – vocal adherents of wine, ritual and song.
The quiet control of the performances, the constant rhythm and the coldness of the lighting are what lend this production its eerie atmosphere.
The Bakkhai themselves, instead of presenting their ecstasy and devotions through chaos, are uncannily still.
Instilled with a deep sense of peace and joy, they show us what the satisfaction of true worship might look like. They positively glow with the smugness of the brainwashed, gleaming with evangelical self-satisfaction.
As well as producing new productions of three major tragedies the theatre is presenting an extensive series of discussions, debates and readings interrogating the influence of Greeks on contemporary life.
The Greek season at the Almeida promises to be impressively comprehensive. And Bakkhai is its magnificently sinister and supernatural centrepiece.
Feminist classic: The Company of Strangers. Photograph: NFB Canada
This year’s London Feminist Film Festival (LFFF) opens today, showcasing films on a wide range of subjects and issues by women directors from across the world.
Fifteen films in total will be screened throughout the four-day festival, which is taking place at Dalston’s Rio Cinema as well as the Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn.
Some of the themes covered include women in UK hip hop, children’s views on gender, sexual harassment in public space and Jewish feminism.
This Saturday there will be a screening of six short films and, on its final day, the festival will hold a ‘feminist classics session’. Each session will be followed by a panel discussion.
The festival begins this evening at the Rio with The Lady of Percussion, a film about a female drummer trying to make it in the male-dominated Cuban music industry. This is followed by Through the Lens of Hip Hop: UK Women. After the screening rapper Pariz-1, who features in the film, is set to perform.
Tomorrow (21 August) will see the UK premiere of She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry by Mary Dore, a history of the “outrageous … brilliant women who founded the modern women’s movement from 1966 to 1971”, while Saturday’s screenings include the European premiere of It Happened Here.
This documentary follows the stark and disturbing prevalence of sexual assault on US university campuses. The film will be followed by a panel discussion chaired by Jessica Horn, a women’s rights consultant and a founding member of the African Feminist Forum. All profits from this screening go to Rape Crisis England and Wales.
The final day of the LFFF kicks off with a matinee screening of But They Can’t Break Stones by Elena Dirstaru, which offers an insight into women’s rights in Nepal, and is preceded by a short by Maryam Tafakory about FGM.
At 4pm the festival will dig up a feminist classic: Cynthia Scott’s 1990 film The Company of Strangers. The film blends fiction, documentary and improvisation to track the (mis)adventures and of a bus-full of elderly women, stranded in the Canadian countryside. The film won Best Canadian Film at that year’s Vancouver International Film Festival.
The festival finale that evening is another UK premiere, Esther Broner: A Weave of Women by Lilly Rivlin, which documents the evolution of Jewish feminism through a portrait of Esther Broner, founder of the first Feminist Passover Seder service in New York in the 1970s.
The LFFF’s director and founder Anna Read said of the festival:“There is still so much discrimination and oppression of women everywhere in the world – we screen films showing women fighting back and navigating a space for themselves and other women in this sexist world.
“We aim to show films which deal with the important issues of the day and which can inspire others to get involved in feminist activism in one way or another. So often we see a narrow, stereotypical misogynist view of women in films – LFFF prides itself on showing films with positive role models for women and girls. So, in essence, we’re trying to create a space for feminism and women filmmakers and to perhaps change the world just a tiny bit.”
The London Feminist Film Festival runs until 23 August at the Rio Cinema, Dalston and the Tricycle Cinema, Kilburn.
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
BúnBúnBún is a new Vietnamese café that has bravely opened on Kingsland Road just two doors up from neighbourhood favourite and hallowed legend Sông Quê.
Bún’s USP, differentiating it from the other Kingsland road cafés, is that it purports to serve authentic fare from Hanoi, particularly bún chå, a pork and noodle dish served in a rich meat broth that I saw everywhere in the city when I visited, and was looking forward to enjoying again.
We thus sat down expecting to find a menu full of hard-to-find classics, but the menu was full of mostly familiar pan-Asian items: green papaya salad, satay, udon noodles, as well as a perplexing “Vietnamese burger” served on a brioche bun (a nod, I suppose, to that law passed by the Tories stating every burger henceforth must only be served well done, and on brioche).
The bún chå itself was accorded a separate instruction manual encased in a plastic stand on each table, with a mathematical formula featuring different types of meats and accompaniments. Between this, and the fact that it was filed under “noodle salad” on the menu (it’s a broth dish), I got confused, presumed that Bún was simply serving a vermicelli salad, and opted for the monkfish instead.
Unfortunately our friendly server was run off his feet and also was not fluent enough in English to answer our questions, so I also ordered some sweet potato chips from the menu, supposing they were was possibly a Hanoian speciality. Alas, I found that they were indeed just chips.
Our meal, supplemented by summer rolls and salt and chilli squid, definitely gave Sông Quê a run for its money: all of it was well prepared, fresh and perfectly executed, and I enjoyed the classics done well. The salt and chilli squid was actually far superior to most of the competitors’, and the monkfish was decently priced and generously portioned with lots of fresh herbs.
So, despite being a little disappointed that I managed to miss the signature dish (I blame both myself and how the information was presented), Bún is all right in my books, although I’d like to see the owners develop a more Hanoian feel as they find their feet.
