Thoughts on Dancing Brick's 'Captain Ko and the Planet of Rice'

Thoughts on Dancing Brick's Captain Ko and the Planet of Rice

So I've just got back from Edinburgh's Underbelly, having seen Dancing Brick's latest piece, Captain Ko and the Planet of Rice. If you're looking for a review, this isn't it – this isn't a review, not as such. In fact, I feel pretty under-qualified to review it at all, because – and at the moment I'll hold my hand up to this – I don't think I really understood all that the company was trying to achieve. Although, at some point, I do need to write a review. At some point.

This isn't the review, this is more of a chance for me to try and hash out some thoughts about Captain Ko... and see where I end up. Feel free to join me, or to move on; up to you. There'll probably be spoilers.

So, Captain Ko. Oh, and the Planet of Rice. The title prepares us for a sci-fi voyage, and possibly a slightly quirky one. For the first twenty minutes or so, that's exactly what we get. But the play clearly divides into three distinct sections, and connecting them is the problem I'm currently having. Let's take them one at a time. [It turns out that these aren't sections at all – we're being shown a triptych of different plays, not one play at all, which actually makes quite a lot of difference – Ed.]

The first section is basically a loving homage to the age of classic TV sci-fi, ie. late sixties and early seventies. The sound effects are lifted straight out of the Star Trek memory banks, while the costumes (pastel blue space suits, optimistically lacking gloves) would be at home in an episode of Captain Scarlet or Thunderbirds. Captain Ko's mission is set up like a sixties TV show, with an opening sequence that harks back to an age when lunar landings were surely only months away and the rest of the solar system seemed within humanity's grasp. If you've ever seen Space 1999, you'll be right at home with the film sequences, which contribute to the very 'Gerry Anderson' feel to the whole section. It's full of a joyous optimism and confidence in humanity's prowess that seems naïve with the benefit of hindsight. But it's only naïve to us because we know that interest in the Space Race collapsed after NASA finally won, and funding dried up when competing with the USSR became defunct.

Even though that momentum fell off, a generation still grew up dreaming of the stars and hoping that one day mankind would reach out and walk on more distant planets. But of course, we haven't. The best we've managed so far is a couple of probes out in deep space, and – topically – an explorer on Mars. The Moonbase Alpha of Anderson's Space 1999 is no closer to reality than it was in the 60s, or even in the real 1999.

What's especially touching about this as a tribute is that it could be all about Gene Rodenberry and classic Trek, but it isn't at all. Perhaps it's the British nature of the company, or the slightly low-budget, home-made aesthetic, but this is much more akin to Anderson sci-fi, and the less obvious shows. I think the later soundtrack even had echoes of the Blake's 7 theme, but that could be coincidental.

Lieutenant Stark, Captain Ko and, er, terror.

Dancing Brick deposit Captain Ko and her Lieutenant on the Planet of Rice in the year 2063, when that's the only planet mankind has yet to bring into the fold of its peaceful planetary union. Remember what I said about the optimism with which classic sci-fi sometimes regards the future? The Planet of Rice causes Ko some problems (malfunctioning equipment, difficulty in navigating, that sort of thing) and she finds her self repeating moments, sequences, phrases – over centuries. She loses all celestial reference points, then loses track of her location on the planet and eventually time itself ceases to have any meaning for her. Her robotic companion is only vaguely aware of the discrepancy. She becomes trapped in a loop without realising, and gets excited on discovering evidence that someone has visited the planet before them (it's the map she discarded on arrival).

And then it gets a bit strange.

In amongst the rice of the planet, Ko finds an proper Grandma cardigan and some glasses. Naturally, she puts them on. Her lieutenant sweeps away the detritus of the Planet of Rice (including bits of their spacesuits) like a sweeper of dreams who, at dawn, clears away the clutter of the subconscious to leave the mind clear for the coming day – and Ko transforms into an elderly woman, pottering about her kitchen. The spacesuit remaining under the cardigan reminded me of that generation that grew up with an eye on the stars and the stories TV told them about what was up there. This grandma could well be the girl who, as a child, dreamt of being Captain Ko, exploring the Planet of Rice, but now she's here, in her kitchen, on Earth, alone.

The play's second section – again, about twenty minutes – consists almost entirely of the elderly Ko in a kitchen which is entirely mimed to a recorded soundtrack of sliding drawers, opening and closing cupboards and clinking plates, cups, saucers, etc. It's very domestic, it's hardly the Planet of Rice, and it's far from the dreams of those who watched Neil Armstrong's giant leap for mankind. And in a way, I guess that's kind of the point. Watch closely, and you'll see this woman repeat the same set of processes, roughly, without actually getting anywhere. She boils the kettle a couple of times, but – although she takes a cup and saucer to the table – never actually pours anything out. She moves plates and cutlery around, as if preparing for a (solitary) meal, but it seems that company isn't the only thing she's lacking as she prepares it at least twice over. She gets caught in a loop of recurring events, and gradually time loses all sense of meaning.

Theatrically, this is brave and, I think, shows just how highly Dancing Brick think of their audience. It's twenty minutes of tediously miming out a domestic setting – and there's a lot of kitchen for the audience to hold in their heads. Following it all asks a genuine mental effort, sticking with it and making sense of this section within the play requires an even greater effort. It was too much effort for the ten-year olds, who became restless, and many of the adults looked and sounded like they were struggling. I'll admit that I – with my critic's head in place, brow furrowed analytically – stopped following it and it's only really through writing this now that it's clicking into place for me.

Speaking of things clicking into place, the third section is what really threw the audience on the night I saw the play. The mime section ends when the elderly Ko is joined by one of the aliens from the Cantina band in Star Wars: A New Hope. I know, I know; my fanboy heart skipped a beat. And there once again were the dreams of that generation who thought mankind's first alien contact would be just decades away. Instead, they're waltzing with imaginary figments and preparing for meals they forget to eat. Thinking about it like that, it's actually desperately sad, but at the time it was quite funny, with the apparently random alien and all.

The Mos Eisley Cantina alien dances with an elderly Captain Ko

But what follows is much more down-to-Earth. Except it's on the Mir Space Station. So we're back with the earlier space exploration, although this is real. This time, a Soviet cosmonaut drifts around the Earth's orbit, discovering the effects of no-gravity and space on a human body. His regular updates and chats with Mission Control are charmingly filmed, accurately reflecting the sorts of transmissions often broadcast from space craft to viewers on Earth. The rapport with his Mission Control contact is sweet, and serves to remind him of the planet he leaves behind for over three hundred days. Unfortunately for him, he's up there when the Soviet Union collapses, and the idealogical conflict of the Space Race ceases to matter. Rather than recall their man, the Russians seem to forget about him – hence his longer-than-planned term aboard the Mir Station. Without his regular updates from Mission Control and the established routine, all reference points gone, time ceases to have meaning for the cosmonaut, and he forgets how to engage with anything outside of the station. He ends up just like Ko on the Planet of Rice and the elderly Ko in her kitchen.

Translations from the Russian for Sergei on the Mir Space Station

In the end, I think that's what binds those three sections together – it's the loss of reference points and of the relevance of time. Once that's gone, people disconnect and – outside of space travel, which, contrary to those dreams of classic sci-fi, most of us won't experience – dementia sets in. Read the show's program, and you'll discover that's the heart of the show: the loss of faculties arising from dementia, but explored through the sci-fi filter. Within each of those three sections, memories and time fold inwards and collapse, as dreams and hopes fade away and cease to matter.

Dancing Brick bring a very low-tech approach to their depiction of space travel, which pales beside some of the (also pretty low-tech) footage they screen, showing 60s TV shows doing a better visual job on low budgets. That's not to say Dancing Brick doesn't effectively conjure space, but there's scope for more. They could, for instance, have much more fun with the idea of low gravity.

All of which leaves me quietly pleased to have seen Captain Ko and the Planet of Rice, but perhaps more pleased with the intellectual tussle I faced afterwards. I think I've got somewhere with it all. Possibly.

Please note: a condensed, proper review version of this (after I'd sorted out my thoughts) appears on FringeReview.co.uk, for whom I went to see Captain Ko and the Planet of Rice. That gives it three stars, because the editors disagreed with my fourth star for bravery.

Whenever I Get Blown Up I Think Of You @ The Junction

It’s not a show about a déjà vu victim experiencing an explosion again and again. Honestly. The title might make it sound like that, but honestly, Molly Naylor’s Whenever I Get Blown Up I Think Of You is a richer performance than that. Strictly speaking, it’s a spoken word performance, but so much emphasis is there on the performance aspect that it feels much more like a one-woman play than anything else.

Whenever I Get Blown Up I Think Of You is a story about being blown up, certainly. In fact, that’s pretty much all you get. The staging is stripped back so far that you’ve only got that story on stage – barely any clutter, one performer and maybe three projections. So the story is paramount, and its environment lends itself to the art of listening, the art of really paying attention to the words (perhaps not surprising for a poem presented as drama).

Molly Naylor, speaking those words, tells her audience about the seventh day in July, 2005, when she got blown up on the Tube at Aldgate station. She was actually relatively unscathed – physically – and instead picked up the glamour of the survivor, the terrorist victim who walked away. Frankly, it’s the glamour she’d been craving up until that point, and maybe this is representative of a generation; not deliberately perhaps, but this idea of a generation seeking the glamour of Hollywood, then allowing a traumatic event to serve as scapegoat for all that’s wrong in their lives, certainly strikes a chord.

Alright, so ‘scapegoat’ is perhaps a little unfair. It’s not as though Naylor blames all her failings (lack of ambition, apathy, selfishness) on the bombings of July 7th. Rather, the bombing becomes a filter through which she (and we) can see things differently. The bombing shines light on aspects of her life that we could already see, but maybe not clearly. So, sure, she’s drifting through life in a happy-go-lucky way before the bombing, but this is only really obvious once the ‘happy’ has been removed and we can all question the ‘lucky’. Her lack of ambition comes strikingly forward when she flees London to rural Wales, but her dead-end jobs before then should have been giveaways.

But what I came back to time and again in Whenever I Get Blown Up I Think Of You was those words. Molly Naylor keeps up a steady stream of them and they fill the black box space. Maybe she doesn’t need the projections to set her locations; the words are enough. This script (really a poem) sings with the rhythmic power of poetry, it’s highly lyrical and sometimes self-consciously so. The fact that it’s a poem being performed like a monologue (it’s not staged like a spoken word performance) means that Whenever I Get Blown Up I Think Of You suffers slightly in a theatre – these words have to spoken in a certain way for the poetry to work – because there’s a certain lack of spontaneity. Naylor’s easy-going, improvised opening few words of greeting (and closing words, to plug her book of the show) serve only to make her rehearsed, scripted tone of voice even more obvious.

Whenever I Get Blown Up I Think Of You is a self-consciously theatrical staging of a highly lyrical rendition of the July 7th bombings and their aftermath. It’s touching, certainly, occasionally funny, sometimes awkward but always poetic and heartfelt.

Others @ The Junction, Cambridge

Jemma invites you to be part of her project over the next six months. She's interested in you because, basically, you're not like her. She's looking for someone other than her, someone different to her, someone 'other'. Don't ask how she knows you're different; she just assumes you are. Thus begins Others, presented by The Paper Birds at The Junction, Cambridge.

Although, it's not actually you she's asking: that's just a letter Jemma (one of The Paper Birds) has written to other women asking them to share stories for Others. The three women featured are an Iranian artist, a prisoner in a British jail and a celebrity (Heather Mills, who seems not to have replied to her letter). That's one for each of the three women who form The Paper Birds and present their work at The Junction in a simple style, speaking directly to their audience, voices sometimes overlapping, contradicting or supporting each other. Meanwhile, music is occasionally provided by a meek male figure who hangs forlornly about the edge of the stage, speaking only to tell us his name (Jonathan).

There's a certain forced attempt at audience interaction as The Paper Birds wait for their front of house clearance. Others becomes a long interruption of their conversation with the audience, the show is what happens while they try and do other things, seemingly distracted by offstage sounds. The Paper Birds tease at the fourth wall in the opening of their show, but never actually do anything with it (not until a suddenly startling moment later on, when their Iranian correspondent blames the West for her troubles, which is all the more powerful for being so sudden).

The Paper Birds' dramatisation of the Iranian artist's story punctures our Western generalisations about Iran and the Middle East. It makes our Western perceptions seem ludicrous and questions our ability to ever really understand the 'other', not just in this case but in all cases. That's the heart of Others: perception and understanding of people who are different, people who are 'other'. The difficulty in understanding is also conveyed far more subtly by undermining Western generalisations than by having Shani Erez (another of The Paper Birds) repeatedly insist that English speakers don't understand people from the Middle East.

The project to find 'others' also leads to a northern UK prison and a woman serving a life sentence for manslaughter. Despite repeated claims of 'It's not about us [The Paper Birds]', this woman's life is seen through the curiosity (read: barely-disguised voyeurism) of those same Paper Birds. Again, the character is purely 'other' and the focus of narrative slant is on the audience/narrators' perception of that 'other'.

Nowhere is this more clear than with the case of the third 'other': Heather Mills. Her entire life appears to have become a media circus, with everyone's perception of her filtered through a hostile press. In Others, she isn't even allowed to answer questions herself (possibly because she hasn't given The Paper Birds any answers). Instead The Paper Birds answer questions for her, increasingly diverging from the facts about Mills' life and into personal speculation. Such is our treatment of celebrities (and often non-celebrities).

Mills and The Paper Birds seem to be part of a group of women (ie. all women) who've suffered at the hands of men. In fact, men come out of Others pretty badly. At best, they heartlessly break up with devoted and devastated women, leaving emotional wreaks behind. At worst, they're serial abusers who father multiple children without a second thought. Could this be the real 'other'? Violent masculinity that that somehow ensnares devoted affection?

Maybe that's what The Paper Birds are somehow really trying to understand, as much as the 'other' women they claim to seek. Or maybe I think that because, as a man, all of these women are my 'other'; that's the kind of thinking sparked off by Others. The Paper Birds do genuinely question perceptions of the 'other' and handle their material in a thought-provoking manner. But it might be interesting to see who Jonathan would find as his 'other'.

Thanks to The Junction, Cambridge's website and jeckman for the images.

The Jewish Wife @ the BAC and some news...

Brecht's little play – more of an extended scene, really – doesn't get many outings. It's one in a series of snapshots called Fear & Misery in the Third Reich. Each shows Nazi policies affecting ordinary Germans in different ways – none of them positive. Here, the Jewish wife of the title is packing before leaving her German (Aryan) husband so that he doesn't lose his job for being married to a Jew. This is an intimate production at the Battersea Arts Centre, hinting at – then laying bare – the frustration of a woman whose world has suddenly turned against her. Matthew Evans – winner of the JMK Director's Award – directs a production in tune with its time and the burning issues of the text.

Meanwhile...

I've recently started working for Hoipolloi Theatre Company, a lovely bunch of people who are based in Cambridge and are about to enjoy a residency at (probably my favourite performance venue ever) the Barbican, in September. They have a blog and everything. Their shows have won a clutch of awards and I highly recommend the one that I've seen, so get to the Barbican for those if you can.

One of those awards was a ThreeWeeks Editors' Award at the 2009 Edinburgh Fringe (it had nothing to do with me, though my five-star review of The Bone House may well have helped Canada's Village Theatre to their Editors' Award), and I'll be covering the Fringe for ThreeWeeks again this year.

They're a great outlet for Fringe coverage, reviewing more than anyone else, and it's also worth keeping an eye on FringeReview who tend to review as industry professionals delving more deeply.

The Fringe is less than a week away, and is naturally quite exciting. Let me know if there are any shows/venues you can recommend.

Whitehouse Institute at NSDF10 (from Noises Off)

When a vicar stands up to give a sermon to a congregation, it doesn't usually get classed as drama. The drama lies outside of what the vicar says and outside of where it's said; out in the supernatural world.

When a tour rep stands up to greet their latest batch of tourists, it doesn't usually get classed as drama. The drama lies in the proposed holiday, the land waiting to be explored – the world outside of the tour rep's speech.

Both vicar and tour rep have learnt a set of words, ready to present to those listening to them. Their listeners hope to gain something from what they hear. The crowd has gathered to listen to them, and though the division between them is more informal than a theatre's normal fourth wall, there is still a noticeable degree of separation between them. It's not any different to a guided tour in an art gallery – like the one on offer at the Holbeck recently. As drama or theatre, the speeches given by curator Neil Bailey-Jones are barely different to those given by a vicar in church.

Such people are also less keen on witholding the secrets of their craft; in fact, conveying information is vital to their occupations. But the Manchester team behind Whitehouse Institute have been trying – with varying degrees of success – to impose a blanket of silence over their show. There's a big twist, that they'd like to keep from the Fest-going body – us lot, their audience. How they expect people not to talk about the show – at NSDF – is hard to grasp. By the way, the twist is the new artwork being replaced by a stark naked woman.

In some ways, it's a tired and worn-out idea that modern art as a movement is pointless and/or pretentious while its artists are too far up themselves to know anything of the outside world. Whitehouse Institute exposes this truism by parading it with glee. The curators of modern galleries also get gently satirised as people stuffed full of commonplace fact – this one leads a tour of the bleedingly obvious around the Uni campus – but that's another shallow idea, one that loses its humour value after being used more than twice. So at over an hour, that joke wore very thin.

Whitehouse Institute almost goes one better than these tired old art debates by giving protesters a voice – but absolutely no attempt at giving a clear, unified reason for the protest. It manages to expose that those oppose modern art as having no valid alternative to that which so aggravates them. There isn't exactly any original or interesting insight on these themes; merely a presentation of them that claims to be drama but fails to scale any such heights.

In fact, any audience member (and, yes, we punters were 'audience members', not 'gallery viewers' or any other such term) who wanted some drama out of their National Student Drama Festival's offering would have had more luck attending happenings outside of the event to which their paid-for ticket entitles them entry. By far the most interesting things happened outside of the gallery (protesters rattling the doors) and indeed outside of the event itself (the protests staged outside of the SJT). The Manchester team is to be commended on their marketing and publicity campaign (including articles – tying into the fiction of Tracey Hutcheson – in our own NOFF), which has become bigger than the performance itself. Or, then again, has the publicity become (part of?) the event?

On the down-side, such hype meant that the only way that Whitehouse Institute could have not been an anti-climax was if the protesters had burnt the gallery to the ground. Now that would have been a twist worth keeping hidden.

The Pillowman at NSDF10 (from Noises Off)

You know, high art and culture are actually the most dangerous and subversive things in modern society. All of this art malarkey seems just as likely to inspire virtue, charity etc. in a person as it does hatred and violence.

A few months ago, a student at my University declared in print that World of Warcraft is notorious for turning players into social pariahs and slovenly wretches – but that's not the only negative effect has on its viewers. More frequently shoot-'em-up games that allow the player to inhabit a violent persona have been linked to an increase in violent crime (as has Hip-Hop, with its glorification of gang turf and guns, cf. In Loving Memory).

In The Pillowman, the idea is that the high artform of the short story is responsible for encouraging horrific crimes. That same student claimed that chess had resulted in more 20th-century deaths than any computer game – which goes to show that you shouldn't believe everything you read. Unfortunately, some people are more susceptible than others to the malign power of art and literature.

It's a malign power that disguises itself in a softer guise (ie. a man made of pillows); appearances are deeply deceptive in this totalitarian world. For a play so obsessed with story-telling (cf. Bad House), there is a surprisingly high number of untrustworthy narrators on display. It's not just the Police that are untrustworthy, but also the supposedly innocent and those that haven't done anything they think is wrong (let's be honest, not a one of them is really innocent).

Martin McDonagh's play might over-state art's prosecution case by making the victim of art's influence a mentally-handicapped person, but James Gamage's sensitive performance keeps this plausible. Undeniably, the dependence Gamage's character has on his brother invests an even heavier moral burden on Chris Cains' Katurian – the artist whose graphic and gruesome words instigate crime, and the brother who must protect and nurture his mentally-handicapped sibling. He is more responsible than most artists accused of inspiring crime, and his plight is so much more interesting for that.

McDonagh's richly dark comic play is a terrifying portrayal of a totalitarian state that refuses to afford rights to its citizens. Its citizens have a twisted set of morals – a world where it's okay for parents to torture their children for years without their other children noticing, and for that to be reflected in the short stories written by the survivors.

Tell Tale at NSDF10 (from Noises Off)

Children play. They like to play. The inner child. The nine-year old expressed in a poetic limbo space before our eyes. In our minds.

Child's play is at the heart of Hull Uni's Tell Tale – the stage is filled with innocent naifs, who have just discovered the space they're in. At the same time as us. Or has the space discovered them? Either way, Sarah Davies' cast then give guided tours for some of the audience – those that brave the parachute game – around the space they themselves have only just discovered.
Each of these children have tales to tell – spot the title. Why: no one knows. Where: no one knows. But they're too adult, too knowledgeable, too worldy-wise, to be children.

They tell stories about animals. About butterflies and kangaroos, about hedgehogs and tortoises, about leopards and moths. They let dingoes loose in the daring dark, and their women wash in the wettest waters of the Wollgongilong River. Their butterflies perch on the fingers of kings. For no readily-apparent reason, they serve squash and biscuits. Don't ask why; your inner child doesn't. It's a children's party for all of the children in the theatre – bring your inner child if you want an invitation.

These children wander and wonder. The audience wonder. They have a chance to wander. Questions are asked: answers remain hidden somewhere off-stage – in some metaphysical, existential game of hide-and-seek. The children never dwell on a question; five more queue in the wings. Neither should you. Let your wonder wander.

It's about saying 'yes' to new questions and ideas. Giving free reign to that inner child.

Phaedra's Love at NSDF10 (from Noises Off)

The state of British society is appalling. There are arrogant, ignorant chavs at the bottom and repulsive, depraved aristocrats at the top – and we'll all be better off without them.

This is a problem exposed in Sarah Kane's Phaedra's Love, where it is picked at like an angry scab. At the heart is the spoilt brat of a prince, Hippolytus. You may have seen messier living rooms in student houses (I have), but you've probably not met someone quite so unpleasantly repellent as this slob. Yet women – and men – still want him! What is there attractive about him? Sure, he's not physically unattractive, but it's hard to see anything likeable. Rupert Lazarus gives the arrogant sneer and charisma needed for such a wastrel with an assured charm – damn him. His Hippolytus is almost a sympathetic character, and it's that which makes the play hang together.

What of that play? Phaedra's Love is based on a Greek Tragedy which takes Hippolytus as its main character, but in Kane's hands it becomes a brutal attack firstly on medical science and then on religion. The shrinks are as flawed as their patients, incapable of giving any help beyond saying that Hippolytus needs to lose weight. Not helpful in the slightest. And as for religion! Kane's Hippolytus is a violently, self-righteously Atheist in a world that seems utterly devoid of any divinity. The Catholic Church – seen in Jamie Askill's Priest – is yet another institution that lets down those most in need of it. Kane shows both medical science and religion to be a disgrace and a let-down.

Racheal Shaw's giggly Phaedra burns on a pyre along with any shred of decency in the world, and the firestorm caused is only the beginning of the end. While Edmund Jones' Theseus tears himself apart in grief, the world goes to Hell and will never come back.

But that gang of chavs at the doors when the audience enters prove that the world is already in a dire state. These floatsam place themselves inside the audience before they pour their filthy presences onto the stage and form the mob at the climax. Their rage at so public a criminal is palpable and has been in some form for much of the play. While the mob is undeniably necessary, it might not need to be chavs – nor do they need to come amongst the audience. They personify the play's rage with unnerving power in the final moments, so much so that I was willing them to their unspeakable acts of violence. So well done to them, the horrible little scumbags.

Doesn't it just make you mad?

Our Country's Good at NSDF10 (from Noises Off)

What's the best way to deal with a person who steals a loaf of bread to feed their family?

If you gave 'hanging' as an answer, you'd be right. Well, according to the legal system established within the British colony of New South Wales in Timberlake Wertenberger's Our Country's Good. It may seem a harsh penalty, but we're dealing with a colony of the British Empire peopled largely by convicts and their soldier guards, and the man enforcing the laws is a General.

He's torn between setting a harsh example in defence of the British laws made in a faraway and his sympathy for the human suffering he sees in the people he governs. In fact, it's deeper than that; many of the play's debates aren't simply about capital punishment. They're about a much bigger debate that relates not only the British colonists/convicts, but also to the native peoples whose voice has no expression in the text though they are physically present in this production's many interludes. The debate Wertenbaker returns to again and again is that between cultivating and civilising (thus bettering) mankind or accepting that mankind will fail, make mistakes and never be corrected. It's a debate still relevant today, when stories about Jon Venables crop up: should we be rehabilitating law-breakers or punishing them? Is it worth elevating such people (criminals, colonised peoples) knowing that their nature is not suited to the ideal of mainstream Europe, and their fall from it is almost inevitable?

Naturally, there's no easy answer to those questions. Nor is there one that applies to all (not even most) cases, and Wertenbaker never pretends such an answer exists. Her play is rather more certain about the means of elevating the criminals or colonised peoples: art. Specifically drama, unsurprising in a dramatist, and particularly relevant to those of us here at NSDF intending to learn about drama. So there are links between the cast of the play-within-a-play of OCG and the audience of OCG; we are people expected to learn, mature and grow as individuals through the practice and application of drama as an artform and agent of culture.

Wertenbaker's ending leaves her audience guessing. We've no idea how the play-within-a-play is received, after its painful and shaky rehearsals. In a way, it leaves the metaphorical ball very much in our court – we're the ones that must take the learning from drama and culture then run with it into the future, in a way that we don't get to see the fictional cast doing. It's our move.

Guidelines for Measures to Cope at NSDF10 (from Noises Off)

What happens when science meets performance – as with any clash of titans – is that one or both of them must sacrifice something to the other. After the tender and beautiful opening minute of Guidelines for Measures to Cope, it becomes clear that science has gained the upper hand.

In a massive information overload, a textbook definition of Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) is given via voiceover – no doubt interesting and informative in itself, especially considering the disorder's low profile in the UK. What BDD boils down to – and do take note, as this is is what Guidelines... is all about – is a disorder that makes (mainly young) people think their bodies look different to the way they actually are – too fat, too small, wrong colour, say. Think of all the time you spend in getting ready to go out and checking your appearance in shop or car windows – imagine having to do that all the time because had no choice. BDD can be like that, without the fun, forever. There are more sufferers than you might think, and it's a very private, introvert disorder that rarely gets reported.

If anyone missed the details of the definition (they probably did), then the cast helpfully chalk notes up on the wall as they go. Like lecture notes, these might mean something in the immediate aftermath of being written, but won't do so later. Every now and then they mark up individual rules HDD sufferers have adopted in order to cope – this is the individual, human story behind the condition if ever you want one. But in some cases, a straightforward narrative isn't strictly necessary (maybe definitive plotlines are over-rated?) and it's interesting that other shows this year also have plots that refuse to be categorical yet this is considered part of their charm.

Avoiding emphasis on a single character, the cast spend the rest of the show enacting and dramatising – in verbatim form – the condition itself. Their stories and monologues of confession are real people's words and between them build a portrait of BDD, not of individual sufferers. But the piece is intended as an educational device, and as such its concern is to teach and educate, to raise our awareness of BDD in the world. In pursuit of that end, it can sometimes be helpful to think in terms of individual faces and stories (an anonymous mass of Holocaust victims tends to arouse far less sympathy than individual Anne Frank – bigger scale, but you get my point) – but Electric Shadows don't worry too much about that.

Instead they layer up experiences of BDD in a non-linear fashion, to demonstrate and dramatise that definition they had at the start. They don't dramatise a character, which could become implausible and suffer inhuman levels of stress, but dramatise instead the condition – as such, the piece speaks to each of us about an experience broader than ourselves.

Bad House at NSDF10 (from Noises Off)

In somewhere fairly unpleasant not too far from here, there's a disreputable bar called the Bawd House (or maybe the Bad House). It's a place where the stained walls are soaked in grim stories to set the teeth on edge and turn the stomach.

Of course you're more than welcome to visit this Bawd House – assuming it's still standing – and partake of its dubious delights...good ale (apparently), spit in the tankards and a leery, one-eyed Landlord who regales his assembled customers with provincial fairy tales.

Tom Gill is that Landlord, and he relishes his role, the vowels and gruesome details rolling round his mouth and out into open, echoey space before him. Beside him, alternately leering and lowering outwards, are his regular chorus of customers – somehow, they're also his audience, yet are more informed than us about the dark history of this place.

And what a history. Ravenous, glutting crows devastating farmland until supernatural forces intervene; a wealthy orphan pursued by (and pursuing) lusty young suitors-turned-grave-robbers beyond death, and finally a series of unexplained child vanishings culminating in a tense chase through churchyards. The Bawd House's pivotal role in this history underlines its distinctly unsavoury character, being the point at which the Landlord's trio of tales come full circle.

The last is probably the strongest, especially as the cast's storytelling enters a whole new dimension. Strong as Tom Gill's monologue performance is, the story-telling premise really takes off when the other cast members are allowed a voice too and the pace rattles along twice as fast. Their new tight focus on a solitary spot, coupled with the refreshing movement around it, gives a whole new level of tension to Bad House.

But ultimately, though it may scare, Bad House is about telling stories. They are tales that inspire fear and then purge it with the relief and reassurance that are – at the end of the day – just stories.

Angel at NSDF10 (from Noises Off)

I don't use the term 'mind-fuck' lightly. Certainly not this time, anyway, considering that DeMontford University's Angel won't necessarily leave you reeling.

The five performers give an ostentatious triumph for the theatre approach that doesn't rely upon (or even need) a narrative. You remember the folk (well, Anthony Mamos) who wrote in Monday's NOFF that: 'I don't like stories'.

So now we can behold the results of the artistic policy that is so opposed to narrative. And how oppositional it is. Watch as Angel takes apart many of the rules associated with theatre. Their space, divided vertically by string and horizontally by tape, is a crazy paving web of controlled anarchy – populated by figures that I'd like to relate to board games and games of chance. I'd like to, but I'm not convinced.

What we get presented with appears to be a 3D exploration of the effect of music on individuals. A certain operatic aria creates a frenetic lucidity prompting the declaration from the angel-man that he keeps going around in circles. Work-out music gets him onto the exercise bike, other styles get him and his companions typing or applauding. It's not strictly about a specific man; it seems to be more a means of conveying the relationship between human behaviour and music. Alas, this is something that needs experiencing (hearing and seeing) to be full grasped.

At the centre is Mamos himself – the man who dresses as an angel. And why not? Why shouldn't a man be free to dress and express himself as he likes? Within reason, of course – but if he's not hurting anyone else, then he can do as he likes. And frankly, his outfit is almost as entertaining as it is disturbing. Though it's the muscular tics that cause the disturbing effect.

The non-linear approach of Angel is brought brazenly to the fore when, after hopelessly flicking through a gigantic book, a character announces that 'it's no story, this, here' and kills the lights. So any attempt to impose meaning on this eclectic piece via plotline is confounded (no doubt to the delight of Mamos' anti-plot school of thought). The irony is that the phrase is placed at the closing of the piece, and so is bound to be seen as a conclusion or definitive statement by those trying to impose a story structure.

4 Bar and Rising at NSDF10 (from Noises Off)

The poor common man at the centre of 4 Bar and Rising is under a lot of pressure: mounting paperwork and networks of dependency have reduced him to a human pinball. The boiler in my house rarely gets up to one bar, and that heats the house fine – these days it's too much. So I dread to think what four bars must be like. This man's plight, as he is pinged around the stage while trying to shrug off the burdens of his world, is one that taps into the essence of modern life. It speaks to each of us living in a society with dress codes and a reliance on exam results as a means of determining worth.

4 Bar... speaks most strongly against the society it finds itself in when Adrian Spring finds himself forced to bear with him a wad of important papers, which between them determine and rigidly classify his life. His birth certificate, exam results, CV, marriage and divorce certificates and all that tiresome bureaucracy that has turned him into the dazed, confused and pressured individual he is. They are all things expressing an obligation on his part (even that of registering his birth) – yet not one demonstrates any benefit he gains, like a wage or food. Most explicitly, a final – unidentified – piece of paper is dangled in front of him and placed just out of his reach. As he strains against the elasticated rope holding him back, struggling to keep hold of the other papers (ie. his entire life, in this society's value-structure), desperate to reach the piece of paper (clearly representing the wages/benefits for the generic proletariat) denied to him, the tension builds and the anti-capitalist allegory becomes very clear. Then the tension snaps – and of course the working man had been denied his rights.

His final act is a liberation not only of mind and body but of the individual from the strictures of a capitalist society that categorises and codifies its citizens amid swathes of bureaucracy.
Alternatively, it may be about something entirely different. To be honest, I really wanted 4 Bar and Rising to be about weather reports. I hoped for some Met Office experts to be pointing to colourful maps of the UK as isobars swept across the Pennines and deposited buckets of rain over Scarborough. Ideally, there would be four isobars, although I don't think that means very much pressure – I'm not a weather forecaster.

There was a man who struggles to cross roads because he worries that some other people will throw sheets of paper at him. They might also tie an elastic rope to him and ping him about like a human pinball. It becomes a live essay on the dangers of bullying. But don't worry; there's a nice ending. Our dazed, confused and abused young man remembers a Christmas or birthday, when his dad gave him a skateboard (represented here by a long metal bar). It's a touching tribute to the power of interpersonal relationships, especially within families.

Actually, neither of those really works and everything I've thought about 4 Bar... has been at best incomplete and at worst flawed. It's the sort of piece that ought to be played about with in an audience's collective imagination for long after the applause dies down. There are a myriad ways of looking at it.

Each member of the cast has a clear idea of what their piece means, and appear to want each audience member to feel that too: an individual interpretation that doesn't depend on any prescribed meaning from elsewhere. So, for those of you that had a meaning worked out – however incomplete – that's great, don't worry about it matching up with any other view, least of all that held by the cast. For the rest of us, 4 Bar... raises questions about how important it is that we pin down the exact meaning of a performance.

In the end, almost any interpretation is equally as valid as another: so said cast member Sam Powell in yesterday's discussion.

National Student Drama Festival 2010

So I've spent the last week or so in Scarborough working on the editorial team of the National Student Drama Festival's magazine, Noises Off.

The magazine is an open-access affair that caters for almost any writerly whim that chances across Fest-goers' minds - though it's mainly used for reviewing the twelve shows selected from across the country and presented in Scarborough. Thrown in there as well tends to be some comment and debate about the Festival, theatre, drama and anything else that happens to get brought up, as well as jokes, poems cartoons etc etc. All good stuff.

There were twelve shows, but this year I didn't review them all; I like to think it was because I was busy being all editorial and helping other people write things and keeping an eye on what was going in to NOFF content-wise. But it's possible I just spent a lot longer than usual thinking about stuff, so missed copy deadline.

Anyway, the next few posts are the reviews I did write. There's no Overview piece this year, I just didn't have time, and anyway Robert Hewison writes one in The Sunday Times which ought to give a good view of the Festival as a whole. That's out on April 11th.

Treasure Island @ The SJT [for thepublicreviews.co.uk]

The Northern Broadsides' production of Treasure Island, adapted from Robert Louis Stevenson and on tour until January.

http://www.thepublicreviews.co.uk/

Macbeth @ Hull Truck

This is a Macbeth that's very much about the audience. No matter where they turn, Shakespeare's Scottish nobles, caught in the close press of Hull Truck's staging, can't escape the eyes fixed on them.

Mainly because Gareth Tudor-Price's adaptation is being staged in the round, which is a first for the new Hull Truck space – and a welcome one. Reducing the playing area has brought the audience closer to the actors than previous productions, serving to increase the audience's sense of involvement as well as bringing back a little of the claustrophobia of the old Spring Street venue (or tin shed).

Intimacy and claustrophobia are two things Tudor-Price and his northern cast are very keen on in this production; even the lighting rig has been lowered to compress the space.
The seven-strong cast give a fast-moving performance, rarely pausing for breath or silly things like scene changes. In a way, that's classic Truck – the reclaimed wooden board set is stripped bare, and costume changes are kept to a minimum (so much so that it can be hard to distinguish between some of the characters). It's also classically 'new Ferensway venue' to have vast amounts of haze pumping onto the stage. For once, the haze lends an incredible atmosphere to the play; murky, bleak and sinister all at once.

On the down side, involving the audience so much leads to several scenes being delivered (with not much sense of movement) out to the main seating block, as though the Truck were still in its normal arrangement. Yes, the cast is playing to the majority of the audience, but at the expense of truly playing in the round. A key advantage of staging plays in the round is that the audience can be more easily made to feel that they're eavesdropping, flies on the wall in a conversation between people unaware of their existence. Actors declaiming into the middle distance spoils that a bit.

Tudor-Price's adaptation removes the physical presence of the infamous witches and instead places them around the stage, often as whispering voices with an eerie backing track. They form another audience, always watching the action, as none of the actors ever leave the stage. It's the sort of directorial trick – Tudor-Price is aiming for a highly ritualistic portrayal of the witches – that looks promising when the show opens with the cast's only woman (Fiona Wass) drawing a tight, occult-type circle in the middle of the stage, while everyone stands around looking ominous in their long leather coats. Later, Lady Macbeth uses the same circle to summon the spirits of the night, and it's a chilling flashback to that opening moment. But other than that, there's precious little witchery. All of the supernatural messing with Macbeth's head is just that – in his head.

Don't get me wrong; James Weaver gives a very strong, solid and captivating performance as the Scottish thane promised the crown by a bunch of witches and spurred on by his wife to kill King Duncan. His relationship with Lady M sizzles, their power balance shifting in every scene, always raw with passion. A shame, then, that their supporting cast is a bit patchy, a bit hit-and-miss. Weaver is the best man onstage for listening to those around him, his face (or sometimes even his shoulders) enough to tell the way his thoughts are going. He justifies Lady M's description of his face as a book in which his thoughts can be read.

With all that haze, the lighting for Macbeth is at times genuinely beautiful, evoking different shades of night as well as the heath and castle, and even making the floorlights look like small torch fires (that probably wasn't deliberate, but looked great). The whole production fits into a sparse, brutal vision, where nobody seems to like anyone else apart from Duncan (the Macbeths like each other, of course) and everyone's on edge. The fights aren't so good to watch – too ritualistic, perhaps, a case of heavy-handed 'one-two, one-two' – but otherwise it all looks lean and mean.

Hull Truck has given the city a Macbeth they can get their teeth into, in an accessible version of Shakespeare's great tragedy.

Abigail's Party @ Hull Truck

Talk about onstage drug-taking!

Mike Leigh's 1977 play contains copious amounts of drug consumption – all legal, I hasten to add. What really stands out is the cloud of tobacco smoke that settles over the stage during the two hours or so of this very suburban comedy of manners.

It's not just the seventies outfits and obsession with social one-upmanship with house prices that date this play. For some reason, the bygone age is irresistibly conjured by the mere fact of people smoking indoors so very casually. Nothing brings home a public smoking ban quite like several people coolly and deliberately flouting it (the actors, not the characters, of course; they've no concept of any harm from (passive or active) smoking).

But, though the most noticeable, the fags aren't the only drugs onstage. It's the fags that warrant the warnings in the theatre's foyer, but each of Leigh's five finely-drawn characters always has a drink on the go. Between them – and especially Pauline Simpson's charmingly naïve Angie – they down enough booze to sink more than just a single battleship. In fairness, they probably need a stiff drink (or four) to get through the party and cope with Amie Taylor's strident, acerbic hostess, Beverly.

The middle-class urbanites small talk their way through less raucous – though more dangerous and drink-fuelled – a party than that of Abigail, the teenager hosting her party down the road. At times, her unseen party sounds more exciting, but I bet it has nothing on the drama at Beverley's.

When I reviewed a performance of this play a few years ago, I saw it as a stultifying, dull script that could only appeal to a generous audience who'd attended similar parties in their younger days (decades ago). But the amateurs of Hessle Theatre Company utterly redeem Leigh's play, presenting a sparkling, perceptive comedy that appeals to the youngest and oldest of the audience. This is a bunch of performers who understand the comedy of Leigh's play far better than the professionals I saw a few years ago. They draw laughs from quiet little moments and facial expressions – perfectly judged moments of social interaction – as much as from their excellent delivery of the punchlines. They let the script breathe, allowing time for the laughter, but not often at the expense of pace.

This company contains amateurs with great skill, whose care and dedication to their craft is evident. It can be seen not only in the detailed set, which is pitched beautifully at a sense of suburban pretension and ostentation, but in the quality of acting. Of particular note is Martin Beaumont as Beverley's put-upon estate agent husband, Laurence. A master of trying to maintain social dignity balanced with the husband resisting (vainly) domination by his wife, Beaumont's Laurence is a joy. His relationship with Beverley is a familiar one, well-evoked , of the couple politely vying for control. That he looks and sounds like a younger Ian Hislop only adds to his comic power.

Hessle Theatre Company has given Hull an invigorating dose of modern classic drama, and for that they are to be applauded; it's exactly what the best regional theatre should be doing.

Up 'n' Under @ Hull Truck

A rugby ball sits, waiting, centre stage. A rugby ball-shaped spotlight focusses on it. Smoke fills the stage, beams of light shooting downwards. Is it Wembley? The Millennium Stadium? A true Theatre of Dreams, a Stadium of Light? It's certainly a big arena set-piece to open John Godber's Up 'n' Under at Hull Truck.

Godber allegedly wrote this play after promising to do so at his interview for the job of Artistic Director at Hull Truck. That was twenty-five years ago, and now the Truck has resurrected this tale of a failing rugby side struggling against both themselves and formidable opposition. In a way, it hasn't aged too well, the casual homophobia still being lapped up by 2009's audience. But this audience also laps up the local colour, the banter and the camaraderie of Godber's team. He sets up a fierce rivalry early on, which gets laughs and sets a lightly confrontational tone throughout – what do you expect from a play about rugby with five men and only one woman?

It's in the next scene that Godber triumphs though. It works when he keeps away from the grandiose themes and styles, instead giving the people what they want by sticking some northern blokes in a room to moan and bicker. This is – if you'll pardon the unintentional pun – Godber's home turf, and the scene is a masterclass in both character and dialogue, each line rushing the scene to its conclusion via a joke. Masterful.

You could probably criticise the casting of this play – the singer can't sing, and some argue that Abi Titmuss is just there for the headlines. But at least there's eye-candy for both halves of the audience, and (like many Truck plays) the cast are highly plausible as a unit, if not as individuals. Speaking of eye-candy, Titmuss surely doesn't need to do quite so much work alone in her onstage gym...does she?

There comes a time in this early play when a teacher writes a poem based around the opening of Romeo & Juliet. He actively apes the style of Shakespeare, and the same can be said of Godber throughout the play; he gives an epic scope to the action that tries to raise it above the level of mere amateur rugby up to something higher, something grander. Take, for example, Titmuss setting the scene in heroic fashion before the action starts (then later reminding us of the story so far, in case we'd forgotten...after the first scene), very Henry V. That stadium feels like just one part of Godber's plan to make everything much bigger than it really is. But for all his knowingly-dropped titbits from Henry V and King Lear, Macbeth and Romeo & Juliet, Godber can't get away from the fact that his story is about some blokes who are out of shape and need chivvying up.

What we're presented with is very much a populist piece of theatre. It doesn't engage with any big themes, apart perhaps from the effects of ageing. What it does do very well is tell an encouraging story and raise laugh after laugh, in classic Hull Truck style – no surprise, as this is probably the play which, more than any other, set the benchmark for that style back in the mid-eighties. The ripping of Shakespeare certainly feels like a new writer showing us what he knows and trying things out.

Viewed in such terms, this is a massive success, and deserves the rapturous applause it gets from a nearly-full house. How many of those kids were there because Up 'n' Under is a set text, or were there for Abi Titmuss, is debatable – but if they liked this (they should) and want to see more like it...who cares why they turned up?

Two Hull Truck Shows a-Saturday

Two shows in Hull Truck's Studio on Saturday. Last Saturday, that is. Both one-offs for the Theatre, and neither exactly what you'd expect from the place. I saw both in what felt like a long day of theatre, though that's as much down to the fact that I was beginning to head into illness-fever territory as anything else.

Afternoon
In the afternoon, children's show Don't Mess, by a company confusingly named Moby Duck. Yes, at least one family turned up expecting a story about a whale. I don't think they were disappointed, but they certainly didn't get what they expected, and the kids were confused at the interval.

There aren't any whales in this story, which is 'a tale as old as India' – there's your first give-away that Moby Duck's work has nothing to do with whales...although, simply reading the publicity would also have told you that. Instead, the three performers give us a classic stepmother vs. daughter fairy tale. I many ways, the Indian version of Snow White, minus the dwarfs. There's a beautiful princess, born in rather unusual circumstances, who turns out to be an amazing cook, before being driven away as part of the needlessly cruel schemes of her new step-mum. In telling this story this way, Moby Duck combine several elements of fairy tales from all over the place, and almost make it like the Thousand and One Nights all thrown in together. Instead of dwarfs and a handsome prince, we've got the intervention of the Hindu gods (well, one of them but in various guises, the production perhaps wisely avoids going into too much detail on the exact way Hindu divinity operates) in multi-media form.

There's plenty of this multi-media stuff to keep the kids open-mouthed, and an awful lot going on visually. It certainly makes a colourful spectacle, and as such the South Asian elements of story-telling are very much on display. Oh, and the lad on percussion in the corner, of course – no doubt an integral part of South Asian stories. All that bright light and drumming didn't do any favours for my headache or growing sense of illness – word of warning: don't start popping paracetamol in children's shows; as if being a wheezing, lone man at the back weren't enough, drugs are a definite way to draw anxious looks.

Ultimately, I'm not sure the Indian dance on display is enough to keep the kids hooked, even when coupled with live sound effects and inventive (economical, set-wise) use of video. What Moby Duck do achieve is to bring a bit of high, foreign culture to Hull, which is to be applauded. How much of it went over the kids' heads is another question. But it's a worthy endeavour, and there really ought to be more attempts to do this.

Evening
In the evening, the less child-friendly vaudeville act, Madam Laycock and her Dabeno Pleasures. If you think the name sounds smutty, that's because it is.

This is a group of young women who bill their style as somewhere between vaudeville and circus, using elements of both to create something unique and amazing. But don't get your hopes up. These are young people trying to be Tim Burton, and not quite pulling it off (but, hey, set your goals high). They've an artfully messy set, both musically and staging-wise, making use of talent on a variety of instrument, mostly drums and piano accordion.

Madam Laycock, despite her large amount of hair and innuendo-laden name, isn't as interesting as her assembled Pleasures, a collection of freaks that have backstories you'd love to believe if only they worked. There's Fritz, the mutant on piano accordion, whose story is great until s/he tries to speak, and that ruins it all. The voodoo grandma on drums also more or less works, if you don't think about it too much, as does the Russian doll on violin (the most competent musician of the group). But just how funny is repeating the idea of the Bearded Lady's bestiality, especially when she's lost her beardy costume before her beardy nature is highlighted? It spoils the joke when the Bearded Lady hasn't got a beard any more. Then there's the Ringmaster figure that welcomes the audience in...a potentially brilliant device, if only it were applied consistently. That seems to be it on the circus front, and the company need to make more of that.

Like the family expecting the story of a whale, I was left slightly confused by the interval. Were these kids actors who played music throughout their poorly-plotted play or a bunch of musicians with silly costumes, half-baked characters and a set? Ultimately, a lack of cohesive storyline marks them out as musicians and not actors – which is fine, but they maybe need that to be more clear early on.

While endearingly messy onstage, Madam Laycock's band block out the scenery behind them. A quick word on the scenery: it almost steals the show; detailed and inventive, it perfectly captures the small town the songs are based in. It's even got shadow puppets, courtesy of that ringmaster. But they can't be seen, because of the Dabeno Pleasures. As with so many other things, the group need a little more focus and a little tidying up, so that their design ethic isn't wasted behind them.

This is a promising group, with a wicked streak and mildly eccentric sense of humour (how eccentric for eccentricity's sake is anyone's guess), that is crying out for a guiding hand to steer them in the right direction and give them some discipline and focus. What they also need is time to hone their performance in front of an audience that's not composed of their friends, so they can get more broad, varied reactions to their (at times self-indulgent) material.

Sizwe Banzi is Dead @ the Stephen Joseph Theatre

With scare stories about identity theft rampant, it's interesting to see a case in which the theft is not only portrayed positively as a crime that harms no one, but also offers one man's only hope of a future worth living.

In our more enlightened, liberal times it's hard to understand how – or rather, why – a system like South Africa's Apartheid worked. The restrictions imposed on the nation's black population by the white minority back in the seventies (when this play is set, though the restrictions go back decades) seemed to ignore the basic fact that black people were, in fact, people.

They are treated instead like children or common property of the white man – shown especially in moments when black adult men in Sizwe Banzi is Dead are called 'boy' by white children. Every movement of Banzi himself and other black South Africans is carefully monitored and logged in their all-important reference book – which is like a passport but much more restrictive. Banzi is banned from leaving his home town for more than three days unless he has a work permit elsewhere, and having failed to return to his dump of a home in time will be in trouble with the authorities whatever he does. On the evidence of this play, Apartheid (specifically the reference book system) seems to have been set up purely to cause more problems for South Africa's black population. Thinking about it, that probably was the plan.

The difficulties are effectively, if comically, explained here by Buntu – a curiously camp South African played by Louis Emerick (of Brookside fame) – when he runs through the tortuous steps Banzi will need to take in order to work in the town Buntu lives in. Emerick's other character, photographer Styles, spends the play's first half setting a context for the later privations. He tells of his past in a Ford car factory which was clearly no Equal Opportunities employer, instead using black men as cheap, abusable labour while the white men stayed in management. It's a vividly performed monologue, but Emerick takes his time to get warmed up.

There's a certain anger this piece keeps bottled up and repressed until Emerick finally unleashes it all in a furious speech persuading Banzi into an illegal choice, but the only one that offers him a future. It is in Banzi's 'death' and subsequent re-birth as another man that writers Athol Fugard, John Kani and Winston Ntshona raise their key issues. What's in a name? as has been asked before. Or rather, what's the value of that name? Is it worth keeping if it can be exchanged to feed a man's children? What does a man own that he can take with him? In the case of the black South African of the early seventies, not very much at all. In fact, even the freedom Styles' father fought for in WWII looks pretty suspect. Bunto's father was left without even his dignity every time a white man passed him in the street.

Thankfully, this play avoids laying into the white population of South Africa – and indeed of everywhere else for not intervening – for Apartheid. Instead, it concentrates on how that system restricted the lives of countless black people for the decades it was in force. The two-man cast brilliantly convey the sheer hopelessness of the situation, the desperation that leads a man to steal the identity of a corpse.

What the Stephen Joseph Theatre presents is a rousing appeal to the individual to react against state oppression, to not knuckle under and drown. It urges circumvention of measures set up to restrict individual dignity, humanity and freedom. Every individual has to fight a system like apartheid, that way – as the production's final seconds highlight – one of them might just get himself out of prison and elected President.