England People Very Nice

Timing is everything.  How fantastic for the National Theatre that its new play by Richard Bean about immigration opens in the middle of a row about Gordon Brown's calls for British Jobs for British Workers and coincides with the sacking of Carol Thatcher by the BBC for using the word 'golliwog'.  Never having seen any of this writer's plays before, I had no idea what to expect, although the name Nicholas Hytner as director tends to guarantee that the show will be good.  This is a historical romp with lots of good jokes, a community play with a big diverse cast and a refreshing desire to offend as many people as possible.  To give it focus, Bean has concentrated on the area of Spitalfields and Brick Lane, a district which has seen waves of migration. First came the  French Huguenot weavers driven out by Louis XIV, then the Irish, and then Jews from Tsarist Russia.  Today the area is dominated by Bangladeshis, and the famous building on the corner of Brick Lane and Fournier Street that was once a church and then a synagogue is now a mosque.  The action is a play-within-a-play -- the story is performed by the inmates and guards of a Home Office detention centre for migrants, all awaiting their brown envelopes giving them leave to remain.  It's a clever frameworking device which enhances the rough-and-ready style of performance;  costumes are stored on racks behind a wire mesh fence at the back of the stage.  But the actors only step out of character briefly at the beginning and end of each act, not long enough for us to get to know their real stories.  Given the harshness and unfairness of the Home Office system, it seems to me that Bean could have given his play a sharper, more Brechtian edge by interweaving the real stories of the detained migrants with the historical roles they are supposed to have devised.  What we get instead is a very funny first half that has echoes of The Monarchs of Merrie England or 1066 And All That.  The first French weavers come up against the 'British Jobs For British Workers' problem.  But before too long England is at war with France, their women are bedding the local weavers and they're telling each other 'Cheer up luv, it may never 'appen'. de Gascoigne quickly becomes Gaskin.  In the 19th century the Irish arrive, copulating happily within the family and keeping pigs in their upstairs rooms.  Bean's delight is to concentrate on stereotypes, wielding a satirical bladder that spares nobody -- the local white working class in the pub, the middle-class liberals and the immigrants themselves. Possibly the present-day politicians who trade on hatred and fear of immigrants get off too lightly.  The first half ends with a chorus of Oy Veys from a bunch of dancing Orthodox rabbis who are fighting off a bunch of Jewish anarchists armed with bacon sandwiches on Yom Kippur.  What's even more marvellous is that this incident really happened!  All this is refreshingly un-PC but somehow a bit lightweight and upbeat;  when an Irish one-eyed baby is thrown out of a window by a mob, it's clear that the story lacks any real tragic dimension because we quickly move on to the next gag.  In the second half the story moves on to the Bangladeshis, starting with the first Lascar merchant navy men from Sylhet who jumped ship during World War Two and opened curry houses in the East End.  Moshi the curry house owner becomes the central protagonist.  Bean's view is that Britain is a mongrel nation that has absorbed waves of immigration because the migrants have always jumped into bed with each other and with the locals.  That's what Moshi does with Deborah, the Irish/Jewish daughter of Ida the pub landlady. The passage to Britishness requires integration, not stand-apart multiculturalism, and the true test of having arrived is an ability to not mind having the piss taken out of you.  Will supporters of Abu Hamza object to the portrayal of a bearded hook-handed imam? Will veiled women march on the National Theatre to protest about Bean poking fun at them?  Will Nicholas Hytner be flooded with letters of complaint from long-lost Jewish cousins in Manchester?  How would this play go down in Brick Lane or in Bradford?  With some of the swearing edited out, this would in my view make a great play for schools, but others may think differently.  The BBC would run a mile from putting anything like this on its screens, which is probably a good point in its favour.  What it gets on the Olivier stage is a brilliantly designed production at a cracking pace, using back-projected animation to stunning effect.  The cast are largely unknown to me and occasionally they have problems with audibility, but this was a preview and I'm sure that problem will be overcome sooner or later.  This play doesn't have all the answers on the tricky subject of immigration, but by offending as many people as it can in a balanced fashion, it brings a refreshing blast of fresh air into the debate, rather as Johnny Speight's Till Death Us Do Part did a generation ago by creating Alf Garnett. 

Comments

[Simone]

Wow John, we even saw this play on the same evening! I am really pleased that you and Penny enjoyed this one, I really should shape up and start writing reviewing the plays I have seen!