Wednesday, April 18, 2018
Review: 'This Is Not A Safe Space' at the Camden People's Theatre, 17th April 2018
This Is Not A Safe Space reviewed by David James
Rating:
You might assume a show titled This Is Not A Safe Space would be some identity-politics-baiting, politically-correct-puncturing attack on Millennial sensitivities. It isn't. In fact, host Jackie Hagan goes out of her way to create a safe space, from assuring any audience members with Tourette's that they do not need to suppress their tics, to providing BSL support throughout the show, right down to the simple way she quickly befriends the audience.
No, the 'space' referred to in the title of the show is, sadly, the United Kingdom as a whole. Since the 2010 election the Conservative government (with the help of the Liberal Democrats) have constructed a purposefully cruel environment for disabled people.
This is a many-faceted cruelty - taking the form of ATOS/Maximus run 'work capability assessments', byzantine PIP (Personal Independence Payments) forms and a general cultural shift that portrays people receiving benefits as workshy scroungers. It bears repeating that the paranoia, misery and pain caused by these systems is not an accident, it's purposefully designed into the system and is borne of a philosophy that posits people claiming disability benefits are actually able to work and simply need to be beaten until they'll admit it. The consequences of these systems are brutal, with DWP statistics revealing that 2,380 people died between 2011 and 2014 alone shortly after being declared able to work.
Into this strides Jackie Hagan: heavily tattooed, fairy lights wrapped around her glittering prosthetic leg, pink-haired and pissed off with the state of the world. Over the course of an hour, we hear how the DWP's policies have impacted upon her life and those around her. To a backdrop of ragged toys and tattered junk she opens the doors on her life, touching on her daily annoyances with people calling her 'brave' and taxi drivers telling her she could be a Paralympian (to which she responds, "Well, why aren't you an Olympian?").
This segues into her experiences with the dreaded PIP forms, which she lucidly outlines as a bureaucratic exercise in humiliation. Filling it out is an exercise that defeats even the naturally optimistic Hagan: who explains that her viewpoint on life is to take all the shit that life hands her and roll it in glitter. Filling in this form is like painstakingly picking every piece of glitter back off that shit, then rubbing the turd in your face - forcing you to dwell on when you were weakest, when you embarrassingly failed, and the moments in which your life was at its absolute worst.
As a reaction she imagines a fantasy PIP form that inverts the DWP's intentions and makes you feel good, asking questions like "Are you (a) awesome, (b) awesome wonky) and (c) wonky with strains of awesome". It's a funny, touching moment - Hagan's intrinsic warmth and empathy a stark contrast to impersonal bureaucratic cruelty. Her argument is further supported by clips of interviews she's had with friends and acquaintances dreading ATOS means testing and terrified of having their already not great living standards further reduced.
Successfully communicating the horror of this system while being funny and good-natured is a tricky tightrope to navigate, and it's to Hagan's credit that she manages. However, there are moments where the focus slips. Most of these come in the (apparently) improvised moments in which Hagan interacts with the audience or heads off on a tangent. On one hand, these moments help define her character and go a long way towards making us like her, on the other the anger of the show is so righteous and its target so deserving of disgust and mockery that the slacker moments feel like time wasted.
It's a tricky criticism - after all, toning down the lighter bits could throw off the balance of the show. Then again, the systems that are the subject of the show are so important, infuriating and morally repellent that as much light needs to be cast on them as possible. Jackie Hagan is absolutely the person to be doing this: there's a razor-sharp lyricism in her poetry, she's an imaginative, engaging performer and is smart enough to distil these issues down and communicate them quickly and effectively.
This Is Not A Safe Space isn't a perfect show, but then it's probably not meant to be. It is, however, an eye-opening examination of how government policy and ideology preys upon those they consider least able to defend themselves. If you want to get angry, check it out.
This Is Not A Safe Space is at Camden People's Theatre until 21 April. Tickets here.
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