East End Review

Tag: Sarah Lewis

  • Between Us – review: a bold confrontation of class inequality

    Callum Dixon as Dave in Between Us at the Arcola Theatre
    Callum Dixon as Dave in Between Us at the Arcola Theatre. Photograph: Jeremy Abrahams

    Julia is a therapist, moonlighting as a stand-up comedian, who has recently made contact with the daughter she gave up for adoption many years ago. Dave, her client, has come to see her since the birth of his daughter triggered a depression. Teresa, another client, is a wealthy woman struggling to cope with caring for the two children with behavioural difficulties she recently adopted.
     
    For her latest work, Sarah Daniels is confronting the audience. Her play opens with Julia, played by Charlotte Cornwell, in the role of stand-up, addressing us, the ‘Guardian-reading’ theatregoers, here in Hackney E8. We are all included in this evening’s critique, which is: ‘What price does society pay to allow the middle classes to feel good about themselves?’ 
     
    The suggestion is that Teresa (Georgina Rich) and Dave (Callum Dixon) are using therapy to feel good about themselves despite the ethically dubious choices they have made. But while the question may be a valid one, this play this feels like an over simplification of the issue. While it promises to ask ‘how have we come to this?’ this question is not really answered, and both Teresa and Dave have something of a plausibility problem. The motivations for Teresa’s behaviour and her relationship with her husband are not properly examined, and her story feels unreal. It also asks too much of the imagination to believe that Dave, a cockney builder, was ever a public school ‘posh boy’, and his behaviour when bumping into his therapist in a bar feels unlikely. 
     
    The scenes involving Julia and her daughter Kath are the most moving. Having boldly declared to begin with that inequality is a thing of the past, the many inequalities in Julia’s relationship with her daughter are painful to witness – she craves a relationship with her, but her feelings are not returned in equal measure, and she tries to use her wealth to buy time with her. Her heartache in these scenes is palpable.
     
    Between Us includes many brilliantly observed details. On learning that her daughter is a hairdresser Julia asks “and you want to be…?”  – “A hairdresser,” Kath replies. But some of the references to societal inequalities seem artificial and inserted, and the snobbery of Julia and Teresa at times too open to be convincingly English.
     
    Between Us is funny, well-acted and always compelling. Some may find its message challenging and important, others may find it unsubtle and didactic. But it is certainly engaging.

    Between Us is at the Arcola Theatre, 24 Ashwin Street, E8 3DL, until 21 June

  • The Trial of the Jew Shylock – review

    Trial of the Jew Shylock 620
    On trial: Ashley Gunstock as Shylock (right)

    Not all of Shakespeare’s works remain popular, but The Merchant of Venice is well-known and often performed today despite the cloud of controversy surrounding it. Perhaps the reason for this longevity is its capacity to keep audiences guessing. Is it a racist play, or a play about racism? Is the character of Shylock villainous or sympathetic? How did Shakespeare view him, and did he ever even meet any Jews?

    The Trial of the Jew Shylock is a new adaption by theatre company Poetic Justice, now showing at the Rosemary Branch. But if the title and promotional blurb has led you to believe this is something fresh and different, you might be disappointed – this is Shakespeare dressed in contemporary clothes, and you’ve seen that before. But that’s not to say this version of the play has nothing interesting to offer.

    As the title indicates, the play centres on the character of Shylock. But while it is hard to escape the conclusion that Shylock, with his merciless insistence on claiming his pound of flesh, is a bit of a baddie, this adaptation goes some way to suggest reasons for his behaviour. We see a man continually abused by his Christian neighbours, whose chief complaints against him seem to be his Jewishness and his perceived love of money. Their open anti-Semitism is jarring to a contemporary audience, as is the accusation of greed, since money, as this production is at pains to point out, is all anyone around here wants. His abusers despise him for being a money lender while availing themselves of his services, and his beloved daughter has abandoned him for a Christian man who loves her for her money as much as herself.

    This Shylock spends most of his time on the defensive, bitterly conscious of the injustice of his situation, and his choosing to reject the offer of big money in favour of an essentially valueless piece of flesh suggests not greed, but rage.

    Ashley Gunstock does a remarkable job of showing the humanity and complexity of a man consistently objectified by everyone around him. His delivery of the ‘Hath not a Jew eyes’ speech and the final forced conversion scene are particularly stunning, confronting the audience with questions about who is showing inhumanity towards whom. Perhaps the victim or villain? debate applies to more than one character in this play.

    The Trial of the Jew Shylock is the Rosemary Branch theatre, 2A Shepperton Road, N1 3DT until 1 June.

     

  • Banksy: The Room in the Elephant – review

    Wall in the Elephant actor Gary Beadle. Photograph: Paul Blakemore
    Wall in the Elephant actor Gary Beadle. Photograph: Paul Blakemore

    Banksy: The Room in the Elephant, now showing at the Arcola, is a double-bill that compares the man with the myth and asks questions about what art is and how we value it. But the central character is not Banksy.

    For seven years Tachowa Covington made his home in an abandoned water-tank outside Los Angeles. He lived, literally and figuratively, on the fringe, furnishing the tank with found objects and transforming it into a ‘palace in the sky.’ In 2011 Banksy, in town for the Oscars, spotted the tank and stencilled ‘this looks a bit like an elephant’ on its outside. Suddenly the tank had huge financial value and Tachowa was evicted from his home.

    The Room in the Elephant is a one-man, 55 minute play starring Gary Beadle of Eastenders fame, based on Tachowa’s story but making no claim to be factual. ‘Don’t no-one want the truth – they want the story,’ explains the imagined Tachowa. Bristol-based playwright, Tom Wainwright, says he “followed his nose into a giant can of worms where truth and fiction lead each other on a merry little dance,” and the play is a self-conscious attempt to ask, ‘who is entitled to tell whose story?’

    The play is followed by the short film Something from Nothing made by the Dallas filmmaker and friend of Tachowa, Hal Samples, comprising material gathered over seven years. It presents Tachowa at home in the tank, through being evicted, then documents his response as he becomes internationally famous through Wainwright’s play.

    There is an irony in the idea of artwork by Banksy, who has made his name as an anti-establishment graffiti artist, being used to displace this true maverick from his home. Something From Nothing reveals that this is not in fact what happened – in reality Tachowa had already been given notice to leave the tank before Banksy’s visit. But this information doesn’t detract from the play’s essential point: that art can be a form of social colonialism.

    It is also a satire on the contemporary circus around Banksy’s pieces. Over seven years Tachowa had invested in a truly original creation, lovingly upcycling a disused water tank into a quirky but comfortable living space. Before the graffiti appeared, it was viewed as a ‘piece of junk’ by the authorities, but it is now being preserved in storage and is the subject of a law suit, simply because the (somewhat inane) observation ‘this looks a bit like an elephant’ has been spray-painted on it. This looks a bit like the emperor is wearing no clothes.

    The Room in the Elephant was a sell-out in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2013. Certainly the script is clever and Beadle gives a strong performance as the charismatic fictional Tachowa. It is Beadle’s talent which carries the show, as there’s little in the way of action.

    The film Something From Nothing is illuminating but at times incoherent and disjointed.

    The Room in the Elephant raises important questions for anyone interested in art and its politics. Otherwise it feels, like Banksy’s art – a little over-hyped.

    The Room in the Elephant is at the Arcola Theatre, 24 Ashwin Street, E8 3DL until 26 April.