LONDON CITY NIGHTS

Wednesday, October 2, 2019

Review: 'Danelaw' at the Old Red Lion, 1st October 2019

Wednesday, October 2, 2019 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

Reviewed by David James

Rating: 

The far-right are currently the fastest-growing terrorist threat in the United Kingdom. Decades of anti-immigrant stories in tabloid newspapers, Conservative policies victimising asylum seekers and online echo chambers (among many other factors) have created a fertile ground for violence. The consequences of this are atrocities like the murder of Jo Cox, the June 2017 attack on a mosque in Finsbury Park and many, many failed terror plots (which don't tend to get a huge deal of media coverage).

Things feel close to breaking point in the UK at the moment - just yesterday I saw a man who'd doused himself in petrol outside Parliament and attempted to set himself on fire. This climate means it's a good time to revive Danelaw, Peter Hamilton's 2005 satire that picks apart the political libido of the far right.

We begin in prison, where Cliff (Dan MacLane) is serving a stretch for racially aggravated assault. He's visited by Warboys (Craig Crosbie), a mysterious upper-class man who hints at a big future for Cliff. Warboys' plan is to recreate the titular Danelaw: a white nationalist separatist territory in East Anglia with Chelmsford as its capital. Cliff, a former football hooligan suffering from mental illness, is clearly the prime candidate to revive Viking Britain.

Soon he's sprung from prison, has rechristened himself Olaf and is busy assembling a motley crew consisting of his former cellmates, family on the outside and a threateningly competent gang of dutch Neo-Nazis. With a stash of explosives and weaponry at their disposal, they draw up plans to strike at a mosque in an attempt to kickstart their race war.

Though Danelaw comes with warnings about violent content and racist imagery, it's so broadly written and performed that the play is basically a cartoon. With the exception of Warboys (and perhaps the Dutch Neo-Nazis), every character is monumentally stupid and gullible. On top of that, most of them don't have any particularly strong racist convictions and have essentially been peer-pressured into fascism.

It's an interesting (and I suspect accurate) perspective. People want to be part of a community and many members of terrorist groups are sucked in because that's what their friends are doing - and once you're in, you're in. The script touches on this ideological malleability many times, characters claiming that they see fascism as a role or phase, with many only involved because they just want to fit in.

Sadly, while Danelaw has a decent amount of insight, it's not a particularly good play. The cast has clearly been directed to go big with their performances - and while Dan MacLane, Craig Crosbie and Evelyn Craven manage it while remaining believable, many members of the cast don't. For example, Will Henry's Jason is just a collection of tics and overly mannered body language - and despite getting a decent chunk of the play to himself I had no idea what the character was supposed to be about.

Then there's the flabby second half. Without wanting to spoil the plot, the play comes a natural conclusion about 15 minutes after the interval. It then proceeds to spin its tyres through a series of lengthy, meandering epilogues that kill all sense of momentum. Even besides that, there's a lot that could (and should) be cut from the play - with many of its 11-strong cast of characters just not contributing much to the overall themes.

Danelaw never quite becomes boring, but it's frustrating that the skeleton of an excellent piece of drama is so clearly present yet is mired in dramatic dead-ends. That said, I appreciated its perspective and with nationalism on the rise (encouraged by a Conservative Party accelerating rightwards) audiences should be reminded that this trajectory always ends with blood on the streets.

Danelaw is at the Old Red Lion until 5 October. Tickets here.

Thursday, October 22, 2015

'Playground' at the Old Red Lion Theatre, 21st October 2015

Thursday, October 22, 2015 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

  
Playground is a group of interesting characters in search of a plot. Set in east London's Victoria Park, the story revolves around a book club studying the Enid Blyton's Famous Five novels. They are; the fidgeting and childlike Danny (Richard Fish), ardent young Communist Tamsin (Laura Garnier), neurotic and sexually repressed Carolyn (Josie Ayers) and nervous abuse survivor Stuart (Simon Every).

Tamsin and Stuart are patients at a psychiatric hospital, Danny is a former patient and we meet Carolyn on her way to commit suicide in Regent's Canal. Bubbling away in the background is a serial killer whose modus operandi is to lure children away from their parents and swiftly decapitate them. Investigating this are caricature detectives Mitchell  (Dan MacLane) and Birch (Christopher James Barley). Also there's the cake-selling Bella (Sarah Quist), who is largely extraneous to proceedings.

A dark comedy, I can't deny that Playground succeeded in wringing a decent amount of genuine chuckles from me. The lion's share of these came from Garnier's excellent Tamsin, a pitch perfect parody of an ardent young Communist who's read a couple of books but has no actual experience of life. I never got tired her her haughtily quoting Trotsky as she consigns ideas to the "dustbin of history" or trying her hardest to align herself with the somewhat perplexed working class Stuart.

Everyone else gets a little moment to shine. Occasionally the comedy is rather broad, as with the outrageously campy drag queen detective with a Thatcher fetish. Sometimes its more subtle, as we gradually piece together the erotic fixations of the severely repressed Carolyn. Everyone bounces well off each other; the play cycling between combinations of different characters just to see how they react to one another.

The only problem is this: I have no idea what the hell this play is about. I'm generally fine with plot being a secondary concern in theatre, but Playground barfs up a big pile of apparently disconnected plot elements and just lets them sit there, confusing everyone. Theoretically the off-stage serial killer provides narrative thrust, but none of the characters appear to care a huge amount about it and some don't even comment on it at all.

That plot element is contrasted with the works of Enid Blyton; characters brandish copies of Famous Five books throughout the play and four huge book covers adorn the set. That serial killer is even leaving copies of Blyton books on his victims, always opened at page 100. It's a nice nostalgia hit to hear people talking about Kirrin Island, Aunt Fanny and Timmy the dog - but I'll be damned if I can work out what thematic connection there is.

To me the Blyton connection seems suspiciously like a vestigial element from an earlier draft of the play. If you squint you can just about imagine Playground as a contemporary satire of The Famous Five. Theoretically our characters could be a group of people teaming up to solve a mystery, yet where Blyton used gleamingly moralistic British kids, Playground uses the mentally ill. Hobbling that interpretation is that Playground's characters don't actually do any mystery-solving, they just sit around wrapped up their various individual dramas.

There being no obvious connection between the two major elements means Playground just doesn't work. The end result feels like a group of sketch comedy characters crowbarred into a flimsy narrative that quickly sputters out. It's a shame - there's some neat writing and performances here, but without any connective tissue it's completely wasted.

★★

Playground is at the Old Red Lion Theatre until 7 November