I am writing this after an act of remembrance in our little town centre. It was a large turn out this year, perhaps because Afghanistan and those in danger there were at the forefront of peoples minds. Filey is a retirement town and many of those around the memorial gardens also had memories of other wars. There has only been one year since the end of the second world war when no British lives were lost in conflict. I also have a long memory, even though I am a bit younger than many of those who were there this morning, and this is why I will be back there in a few days time to commemorate armistice day, the day when the biggest slaughter of a generation of men that has ever been seen finally stopped. Great efforts were made to mark the passing of each of the men who died, whether at the front or afterwards on one of the war memorials which scatter our towns and villages, but this did not prevent Wilfred Owen’s words being horribly true. “What passing bells for those who die as cattle?” I stand there each year and think of him.

When I was a child the elderly men who stood around the memorial in my village were those who had come through that carnage. My grandfather was one of them. Each armistice day (and that is most definitely what it was for them) he would shine his boots and his medals (discs to make eyes close, Owen said) and put on his best black coat and hat. The old Haig Fund poppies came in pairs in those days, they had silk petals and foil stems, delicate and pretty. Each year a new one would be bought and kept pristine for the day itself. His friends would arrive at our house and they would sit together sharing memories, all ready in good time because the thought of being late was intolerable. It was the only time that there was any talk of the first world war in our house, even though a huge black and white photo of my grandfather and his comrades had pride of place in the front room, along with an engraved artillery shell. Nobody went into that room for the first time without that shell being pointed out. He claimed that he had stolen it from a German officer and I believe him. He only went abroad once in his life and that was to fight on the Western front, looking after the horses in his Royal Artillery battalion who worked alongside the men and died in their tens of thousands. What their suffering must have done to a dedicated horseman I can only guess. He never spoke about it and being young and foolish I never asked.

The act of remembrance itself has changed little since then. Today the vicars surplice still flapped in the wind, the legion flags were dipped, the words of remembrance were spoken and the trumpeter played The Last Post and Reveille under a clear blue sky. It was a heartfelt and romantic scene, as far removed from the chaos and suffering of war as could be imagined, perhaps an attempt to make sense of something which is essentially wasteful, tragic, and senseless. Those touched personally by the sufferings of war have to fight to believe that there is a meaning in their suffering in order to carry on.

We used to sing a beautiful old hymn, O Valiant Hearts:

“O valiant hearts who to your glory came
Through dust of conflict and through battle flame;
Tranquil you lie, your knightly virtue proved,
Your memory hallowed in the land you loved.”

Somehow I managed to believe that sentiment alongside Owens bitter and more truthful version, when he calls “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” (it is sweet and right to die for your country) “the old lie.” I did this for my grandfather’s sake, and I still do. He spent the rest of his life remembering his one trip abroad and as long as I am here I shall stand in his place each Armistice day even if it is Owen’s words rather than the comforting sentiment of a hymn in my heart. He would want me to.

This was our book group choice for this month and it was disappointing. It was badly written and one dimensional and given the subject matter this isn’t something it could get away with easily. It needed some emotion and some heart. The lead character was a vaccuum who I found it very difficult to know and sympathise with, and the photographer who she was researching never came to life for me. The dialogue and sentence structure were particularly awkward and there was a dry distant feel to the narrative voice. Too often I felt that I was being told things rather than shown them, whether it was the characters feelings or aspects of the plot. It isn’t enough, for example, to be told that the photographer had talent and list his pictures- you need to explain why. I have a feeling the prints were included in the book to make up for this lack. The whole book was a set up for the final pages and it wasn’t worth it- I just didn’t care enough.

The first thing which has to be said is that The Cherry Orchard is a stunningly good piece of writing. I realise that other people have known this for a lot longer than I have, but it still has to be said. Outside of Shakespeare I have seen nothing else which is able to expose the human condition with such wisdom, humour, and compassion. Quite simply it’s all there-the idealism of youth, the blindness and despair of love, self deception, bravery and endurance. All shown with a merciless humour, within a story whose structure is as tight as a drum. Not a word or a gesture is wasted and every moment serves to illuminate the characters as if by lightening. We see their vanity, lies, and misplaced hopes, as the truth of each situation and relationship is spelled out to us. We know these people. They are people you see every day, on every street. You laugh at them and suffer with them. It’s hard to know what more you could ask from a piece of theatre.
I have been enormously lucky to see it for the first time in a production which was just perfect. I’m sorry-I would love to sit here and be clever for you and take it apart explaining where I thought the faults were but …………I can’t. The whole thing rang true like a piece of perfect glassware and every character was a living breathing human being who had a complete rounded life. I somehow feel that one day I will meet Madame Ranyevskaya down Settle market and ask her how she got on with her lover in Paris, and I could easily find myself wondering if Gaev actually made a decent bank clerk. Trofimov,the perpetual student is probably doing some tin pot liberal arts course at Yorkshire Coast College. In fact, as soon as I finish writing this I intend to ring Dunyasha and tell her that Yasha is a worthless shit who is not worth crying over-I’ve been there so I know. Mind you, of all the characters the one whom I felt most desperate for was Varya, Madame R’s adopted daughter. In her late thirties, too old, too plain and too clever to be a good marriage prospect, she has been hoping against hope for a proposal from Lopakhin. God knows he isn’t much, in spite of his money, but he’s the only chance she’s got. She alone among all the characters has the realism to see her situation clearly, but when the moment comes, and all he can manage to talk about is the weather, it still tears her apart as she faces the empty drudgery of life as a housekeeper. Unbelievably it was a moment which was also supremely funny. This really is genius. There were so many clever links in the writing too. For example the running joke about Gaev was that he loved making empty speeches at the drop of a hat-including one to a bookcase. The family spend their lives telling him to shut up. Until the moment when he arrives at the party just ahead of Lopakhin with the knowledge that the estate has been sold and he is utterly unable to communicate. Wonderful irony, and a very human truth……..most people are very articulate as long as they have nothing important to say. There was also a magical little performance from one of my favourite actors, John Dougall, who played a hapless clerk called Epihodov. Show this man a chair in the middle of an empty ballroom and he’ll fall over it. A small speck of humanity who is forgotten the instant he leaves a room. He’s one of natures fall guys. Life is an unknown country that he is rushing around desperately without a map. All the same, Dunyasha would be better off accepting his proposal, rather than sighing after Yasha and letting him put her through hell. He needs someone to look after him after all. And yes it was hell -her brave smile didn’t fool me any more than Ranyevskayas does. Penelope Wiltons performance as Ranyevskaya was wonderful. It is a part any actress of a certain age would walk over dead bodies for, and she didn’t miss a trick. She is warm and generous, embracing life with a feckless enthusiasm and a magnificent disregard of reality. Something will turn up and oh dear, yes, she has screwed up again but she just can’t help it, don’t you see? On just a few occasions the mask slips, we see the pain, and it’s heartbreaking. You admire her bravery, and her appetite for life, while despairing of her lack of realism and practicality.
The director, Adrian Noble, must have done something to earn his money but I’m not sure what, which is exactly as it should be. The piece moved forward with simplicity and clarity and all the key moments were allowed to resonate with no distraction or over-elaboration. The set was very simple too. A large wooden floor with plain pale blue furniture and dust sheets-as little as possible. The orchard was something we saw through their eyes at the back of the auditorium. The key image was a large gauze cage that let down around the thrust stage before the opening. You wondered why at first, pretty though it was, until it became a key part of the most poignant final image I have ever seen on stage.

The October half term is almost over and that means a final goodbye to the visitors who invade our small seaside town during the summer months. It has to be said that they are not universally liked, and it will be good to have our town and our beautiful bay back. There will be less pushing and shoving and fewer harrassed parents shouting at wayward children in the streets. “Gerrout!” “Gerrear!” “Gerroff!” There will also be less rubbish left around. Nobody will poke their sweet wrappers into the middle of our hedge and leave them there and there will be no more chips and ice creams lying around on the pavement for the dog to find and hoover up. Sometimes a local will fight their corner. I saw one man wind down the window of his car when he saw a child kicking an empty can in the street and shout. “We’ll be knee deep in shit afore you lot go home.” The mother wasn’t bothered. She just screamed back, “he were only kickin’ it” and went on her way. Of course the visitors bring money into the town, the pound shops rely on them, but we also pay a price.

It’s interesting living somewhere that changes through the year. During the summer I have been walking the dog along the beach amongst children digging in the sand and eating ice creams and making my way across the park through families playing cricket and rows of elderly people enjoying the outdoor brass band concerts. Soon there will be hardly anybody here at all and I will be heading down a wild, windy and almost empty beach with my hood up and my head down amongst the returning flocks of small wading birds who hurry over the sand in formation. Familiar faces in town who have been hidden among the crowds will reappear and chat, telling each other quietly that it is good to see the back of the trippers. Next Spring we may feel differently when the weather gets warmer, the daffodils appear, and the boating pool and the pitch and putt are opened for Easter. It will all be fresh and new and we will enjoy the company of strangers as a sign that another summer is on its way. Maybe.

This is Alan Ayckbourn’s seventy third play. Think about that for a minute. He has written seventy three plays. I have seen a lot of them and it has to be said that not all of them are great, in fact some of them are duds, but if you have written that many plays then this fact isn’t even a criticism- more like an inevitability. The best of them are some of the most clever, hard edged and technically accomplished comedies that you could hope to see. He has made a huge contribution both to British theatre and the town of Scarborough which he adopted many years ago as his home. They haven’t always appreciated him there but their indifference has given a quiet self effacing man the chance to work on his craft without being bothered too much and build relationships with other creative people over the years in a familiar comfortable environment. It has suited him. It has suited me too, as where else would you always be sure of getting a seat for the world premieres of Britain’s most popular playwright? My Wonderful Day is going straight off to New York to open off Broadway, and The Norman Conquests won seven Tony awards last year but Scarborough can’t even be bothered to sell out a 404 seat capacity house for a month to see it. A local councillor once gave his opinion that the money (little enough) given to the SJT would be better spent on public toilets. Do I sound angry? Well I am a bit.

So, what about My Wonderful Day? It is the story of a day in the life of a nine year old girl whose heavily pregnant mother brings her along to her cleaning job when she claims to be too ill to go to school and it’s a small gem. While Winnie sits around writing her essay assignment ( My Wonderful Day) about what is going on around her we see the heartaches, foibles and stupidities of the people around her through her eyes as she observes them and writes about them. Much of the high drama happens off stage and we observe it through her reactions. There are plenty of beautiful gentle little jokes and it takes the confidence and technical skill of a man who has spent his life writing and directing theatre to have the confidence to bring them off. It also demands a star performance from the actress playing Winnie, the nine year old observer, or it will never work, and thankfully it gets one in spades from Ayesha Antoine. She is an experienced 28 year old actress but her skill, and her interest in child psychology, has produced a performance which is a funny, truthful and utterly convincing portrait of a nine year old girl. And I should know, I taught enough of them over the years. You could see the wheels going round in her brain and know what she was thinking thanks to the way that every moment of the performance had been carefully thought out and followed through. It was utterly charming.

This is a quiet thoughtful play from a man who is looking back at his own childhood and using a lifetimes experience in theatre to make his points, relying on character and small beautifully played moments to do the work, there are no showy fireworks, and no overt technical cleverness. There is a sequence where Winnie is reading aloud from The Secret Garden to one of the characters, a lonely part time dad whose marriage has broken up, which is a complete joy without anything much actually needing to happen, simply because what we do see is totally honest and psychologically believable. The staging is clever, with three rooms being represented by a minimum of furniture and lighting and delineated by accurate movement from the characters. The other performances are funny and mostly not overplayed for laughs and two hours of action and reaction, played without an interval, flies by.

Like most working class northern kids my experience of theatre began with pantomime. It was at York Theatre Royal, long before the blessed reign of Berwick Kaler, and I got up there on stage in the middle of a row of other kids, told ‘em my name and age, and did a lot of shouting. I have loved audience participation ever since. To give you some kind of idea what I mean, when I went to see The Venetian Twins in the Swan a member of the audience was given an umbrella to hold during an altercation. I went across after the show, noted the seat number, and booked the same seat for myself a couple of months later. I have always wondered if the actor concerned (I think it was David Troughton) was taken aback to see someone holding out their hands with a massive grin instead of being surprised when it was time to hold the brolly. In my defence it was extremely funny that show and I wouldn’t have gone back just to hold a prop.

I also vividly remember Anthony showing me personally the blood on Caesar’s toga during a promenade production of Julius Caesar in The Other Place. I had shaken Caesars hand on his first entrance so there was an added sense of personal loss. 

The high point of my career as a participating member of the audience was when I went down to the NT to see The Mysteries. I waved the blue cloth when Jesus was baptised, sang, danced, sat at the foot of the cross, and best of all had both of my hands grabbed by Mary (the wonderful Sue Johnston) who gave her speech about Jesus ascending up to heaven, a mixture of pain, loss and pride, directly to me with full eye contact. Bliss. Short of actually being given a few lines to speak I doubt I’ll ever better that.

Sadly the opportunities for a member of the audience to be a real practical part of a piece of theatre are usually quite limited. Within your imagination however there are no limits and that shared focus with the other people around you gives great theatre an intensity for me which I don’t find anywhere else. You are breathing the same air as the actors and inhabiting the same space. This can produce a kind of communal joy which turns up in all kinds of unexpected and unforeseen ways. Back in 1982 I saw a stage production of It Aint Half Hot Mum at the Futurist in Scarborough. It was a typical show of its kind, fodder for the visitors who were still just about filling the resorts along the coast here at that time. When the show was due to start Gunner Graham (John Clegg) eased his way diffidently through the curtains and made his way to an upright piano at the side of the stage. He plonked out the opening chords of the theme song (which everyone in the theatre knew by heart) the curtains swished back and the cast swung into the same opening routine which we saw on our television screens each week. It was magical. The rush of welcome which the audience sent out towards those actors would have knocked them down flat if they hadn’t had their arms linked for the opening number. The last time I was a part of a feeling like that was when Alan Bennett walked on stage at the Hay Festival this year. Some of the audience cheered just because he was standing there in front of them. He lives! He is among us!

Of course that communal joy can be rather elusive. I was once given a seat up at the top of the main house at Stratford in the middle of a group of exhausted Americans who were on a whistle stop tour. I don’t remember which play now, and I’m sure that they don’t either because they used the chance to have a sleep as soon as the lights went down. One of them even complained to his friend at the interval that the emergency light for the St John’s ambulance lady had kept him awake. I’m not joking. I wish I was.

Audiences can also sometimes feel downright unpleasant. Watching The Lieutenant of Inishmaan in the West End I had a strong sense that the people around me had a mindset and an attitude to violence which I didn’t share and the play was feeding it. They were laughing too loudly in the wrong places. I was glad to be out of that one.

I also dislike the audiences where people laugh smugly in all the right places, just to show those around them that they know where they are. You can always tell the ones who are doing that, they are usually just a bit too late to laugh and they laugh for just slightly too long. After a performance of The Importance of Being Earnest in Norwich, when I went round to get my programme signed, Martin Jarvis had been as delighted as I was to hear the audience reaction and realise that there were people in the audience who didn’t know that Ernest is in fact the characters real name until it was revealed- they had told each other out loud and really relished the joke. I have always been very grateful myself that I didn’t know about Konstantin’s suicide at the end of The Seagull when I saw it for the first time. It’s a mighty shock if you don’t.

I do sometimes wonder whether other audience members have actually been watching the same play as me and that can be annoying. After The History Boys at the Lowry some girl was showing off to her friends and attempting to be clever by announcing that she “didn’t like realistic theatre”. I hope that one day she sees the error of her ways. If I had done what I would have liked to do and pinned her to the wall while I pointed them out she would have learned sooner. I had more time for the young audience who wolf-whistled the bed in Romeo and Juliet. At least they were being open and honest and they did shut up.

Sometimes you can share a very personal moment with a single member of an audience. When I saw the famous production of An Inspector Calls (with the original cast  Go Kenneth Cranham) I was sitting next to an elderly man, old enough to have seen the original production. We were both on our own. At the end, after the house had collapsed into the wasteland around it, he turned to me with great satisfaction. “Priestley would have liked that.” He would too. It was all the review it needed.

If you go up to Edinburgh on your own, as I have, you can do a lot of that kind of thing, and sometimes with an entire audience. At the interval of the first performance of Robert Le Pages hugely hyped production of The Seven Streams of the River Ota in 1994 the whole lot of us turned to each other in confusion, after a few beats of puzzled silence, and asked each other “Was that really as bad as I just thought it was?” Without exception we were reassured that it was.

Back in 1998 I got a ticket for the production of Oh What a Lovely War which the NT toured in a big top. When it reached Dewsbury Rugby ground, where I saw a matinee, somebody, probably from one of the local care homes had had the bright idea of bringing along some of the residents, possibly as a kind of therapy. Perhaps on the basis that there were old songs advertised that they might enjoy singing along to and the front area was café table type seating with plenty of room for wheelchairs. Well, they didn’t mind the songs, as their carers had hoped, and they did sing along, in a way that wasn’t always welcome, but in between songs it was a bit of a challenge and some of them had a wander round wanting to know if it had finished yet. I doubt the cast had seen that one coming when they joined the NT.

I saw the NT production of The Misanthrope at Norwich theatre royal in 1989 with Edward Petherbridge playing Alceste, and along with the rest of the audience I was surprised to hear the national anthem, for the first time in years, before the curtain went up. Naturally we all stood up hesitantly knowing that was what we were meant to do, and when the curtain swung back before it finished we were embarrassed to find ourselves faced by a bunch of firmly seated French aristocrats looking down their noses scornfully at such foolish behaviour. Very clever.

The best decision I ever made up at Edinburgh was when I ditched a boring official festival production (Lanark I think it was called) and toddled down to Drummond high school to see Theatro Biuru Podrozy’s Carmen Funebre. We gathered in the dark on a warm night in front of some enormous gates in the middle of the playground and were given a lesson in the horror and futility of war that I will never forget, with fire, smoke, giant soldiers with bullwhips forcing their way through us onto the central area and tiny lighted paper houses being floated up into a dark sky.

Some people were angry about health and safety when the Grassmarket production, Mad sent chair legs (smashed by the cast who had personal experience of mental distress) flying up into the audience. The rest of us were left shaking at the end, unable to leave our seats and had to be talked out of the distress which we had taken on from the cast.

That’s what makes theatre unlike anything else, that shared contract between performer and audience that only exists in the present moment. You have to be there, bum on seat and brain engaged, and that alone makes it worth turning up, in the face of previous disappointments, hoping that it will be as special as you know it can be.

It is five years ago now since I was in Arequipa and I don’t think I’ve forgotten a moment of it. Of all the places we visited in Peru Arequipa was by far my favourite. Perhaps it was those first few moments that did it, getting off the plane, walking across the tarmac with my bag in hand, into an open space full of blue sky and sunshine and surrounded by volcanoes. I fell in love with it straight away. After a dirty, damp and fog ridden Lima it was paradise, and almost every day of the year in Arequipa is just as perfect. Inside the little terminal there was a Peruvian band waiting to welcome us and even the fact that someone tried to steal one of our bags didn’t make me feel unsafe. I had to learn that from the list of streets that it wasn’t wise to walk down and from the armed guards policing the main square, and more than anything from a fellow guest at our hostel who was strangle mugged and left helpless in the road with her glasses broken and her money and valuables taken.

The main square in Arequipa is glorious. The Spanish influenced colonial buildings are built from a white volcanic rock, sillar, which sparkles in the sun and the surfaces are decorated in baroque style, with confidence and bravura. Once again danger is lurking, the two towers of the cathedral are made from plastic because of damage from regular earthquakes although you would never know it, even when somebody points it out. You can walk through the colonades and archways and across the gardens among Peruvians of all ages who love being outside and socialising. If you are lucky enough to be there on a saints day, as I was, you will see the whole of Arequipa on parade, chefs in their whites and tall hats, children showing off their pets, representatives of every part of the community demonstrating their pride in their work, their beliefs and their city. A Peruvian will always dress in the best that they can afford, with colour and style.

One of the glories of Arequipa is Santa Catalina Monastery. This is a beautiful still haven of coloured courtyards and flowers in which you can wander around and lose yourself, exploring hidden corners, taking photographs or settling down to read a good book.

There is need all around. Tiny children are selling matches and toting around shoeshine kits and if you sit in one of the streetside cafes for a sandwich you may find yourself, as I did, giving the remains of your food to a elderly man who begs from you, holding out his sack politely for anything you may not want. The cafes are well used to this system and will wrap your leftovers so that they can be passed on. We visited a children’s home and school, Casar Hogar San Jose where street children are helped, taught, and given a chance for a fresh start. They were brilliant, full of life, energy and creativity and they loved the English country dancing which I taught them. Some of their stories were heartbreaking. The girls are brought down into the city when their desperate families are promised that they will be given an education and looked after. This promise can turn into a life of slave labour and sometimes abuse which causes them to flee onto the streets.

I was able to visit one of the most famous of the Inca mummies, who is kept in a small museum in the city. When you are given the chance to look into the face of a 12 year old girl who was given as an offering to the Gods and died up on the slopes of Mount Ampato somewhere around 1440 it is quite heartstopping. You can’t help but wonder about her last journey and her final thoughts and feelings. Juanita is beautifully preserved and sits curled up in a glass case. There is a sense of calm around her now, a sense that she is waiting for something or someone and if you look for long enough you begin to feel that she might move.

It is a magical place and I long to go back.

I feel like talking about the set, which is never a good sign. This tale of a talented student, a good clean living young lad who is radicalised by a group of extremist muslims when he goes away to university at the time of the Rushdie fatwa didn’t quite work. The play describes his journey as he is led into the possibilities of violence before finally being horrified by how far his new friends are prepared to go and renouncing it in favour of pursuing love and developing his talent. The central performance by Jonathan Bonnici, a new young actor was spot on. He shone as Shahid and was engaging, truthful and natural but some of the other performances were too stereotyped and one or two were almost caricatures. This made for some nice comedy (especially from Robert Mountford as Shahid’s brother Chili) but it sometimes did a disservice to the subject matter. It was important that we should believe that this group of people were prepared to kill for their beliefs and understand why. We needed more rounded and believable characters to be able to do this fully.

I think most of the problems were caused by the script. Hanif Kureishi is a fine writer but he has not really succeeded in adapting his own material convincingly this time. It is too preachy and didactic, and sometimes comes near to cliche. I didn’t want to see them sitting around discussing issues- I wanted to know what made them tick. The old maxim of show, don’t tell. There was some very nice physical theatre woven into the story and it would have been interesting to see this developed more, the cast were talented movers and handled the speed of the production, the choreographed moves and the fast changes well.

There is an important play to be written about this subject and we need to see it, it’s an enormous pity that this wasn’t it. The setting was all there for it to happen. Three walls formed a lovely cool white room, in traditional Georgian style (representing old England I suppose) which was cleverly lit with constantly changing slogans of the time in neon colours, decorative features and backdrops projected onto its surface. This allowed settings to change quickly and kept the pace moving, as well as adding a pointed commentary on the times. The coup de theatre at the end when the three walls of the room were flung back to the floor by the bomb just as the hero was making a new start was a fine ending and deserved a better play.

Interesting that Brecht’s didactic theatre written in 1944 filled the main house for last Thursdays matinee while this one- an NT production in the much smaller courtyard theatre- was at least three quarters empty. Maybe the teachers who could have used the schools pack which the NT produced were more comfortable dealing with issues in the abstract and the young multi racial community all around the theatre who should have been a target audience knew enough to realise that they were in danger of being condescended to.

Brecht is not one of my favourite playwrights. It’s all a bit too hectoring and didactic. I understand that he wants his audience to stand back from the characters and judge their actions rather than identifying with them so much that they forget what he is trying to teach you, but I would rather learn in my own way from the characters by identifying with them in exactly the way he doesn’t want me to. All the same, it’s theatre and I really like Shared Experience so there I was, in the middle of a matinee audience full of young teenagers who were ready to howl with laughter every time the cynical debased soldier said dickhead and wolf whistle at the sight of a man sitting in a bath. I would say that they need to grow up but probably that’s what they were there for.

There was a lot to enjoy, especially when the stronger writing kicked in in the second half and the two 24 carat performances were able to come into their own. James Clyde had enormous presence, attack and control as the singer and Azdak the judge and Matti Houghton made a very touching and heartfelt Grusha, making the most of the fact that she was the only actor allowed to stay absolutely inside her character for the whole play. It was a relief to be able to take her side and stand with her against all the cynicism which threatened to destroy her.
The chorus of local people were very good and worked especially well with James Clyde. Thankfully I managed to keep my envy of the fact that they were up there on stage singing and reacting under control- I’d have loved to be sitting with them.
The was some wonderful use of puppetry as the child grew up. The moment when he walked into the courtroom and we saw him on his feet for the first time drew gasps of pleasure from the audience and the company really made him live. Lots of nice nice touches in the staging too- a river made from a long cloth unrolled at speed in shades of blue, Grusha crossing a ravine with two ropes and some strobe lighting, and a huge effigy of a murdered judge built around a surgical stand which could be pushed around at speed. There was also a bag of rehydration fluids attached to the judges chair (which was a barbers chair- echoes of Sweeney Todd) and I thought that was a nice touch.

I suppose my two reservations were that I really don’t think the writing in the first half is always strong enough and there were a few of the cast who couldn’t quite pull off the control needed to play the character and stand apart and play the message at the same time. I think that’s probably a very difficult trick to pull off.

A really worthwhile afternoon then, especially if a few of those kids who were so irritating grow up to love theatre and be annoyed in their turn.

A very clever two hander, short, simple and well constructed, which also packs a powerful punch. The audience are made to identify very quickly with the two characters as both the script and the performance style is very open and personal. Often we were being spoken to directly and the warmth and intimacy which this involved was quite charming. It was also clever how the play restricted itself to the central injustice of apartheid, the lie that one human being is worth more than another because of their colour and should be treated as such, allowing us to understand that by getting to know the characters in a very personal way. The fact that Sizwe had to give up his identity in order to maintain a simple right to live where he wanted and support his family was horror enough- especially when the actors had built up such a personal relationship with the audience. Both of them were excellent. Louis Emerick showed great versatility as Styles and Buntu and quickly established a rapport with the tiny matinee audience. He has great presence and used that to full effect. Seun Shote is charming and funny but he also showed great presence and dignity in his speech asserting his worth as a man.
The set was quite beautiful. It was made up of sepia photographs of township people and back projected images were used right through the show to add colour and resonance. During the street scene the whole back wall of the theatre was used to provide a township street as a setting and it gave the enclosed scenes which we were mostly seeing a context which worked very well indeed.
Only one tiny mis-judgment. I wouldn’t have had John Kani and Winston Ntshone’s names used within the play as it broke through the suspension of disbelief. It will have been meant as a tribute but it still shouldn’t have been done.