LONDON CITY NIGHTS

Friday, January 27, 2017

Review: 'The Litterati' at Vault Festival, 26th January 2017

Friday, January 27, 2017 - by londoncitynights · - 1 Comment

If you're going to stage a play about a subterranean London subculture, The Vaults is definitely the place to do it. Nestled under the Victorian brickwork of Waterloo Station, with trains periodically rumbling like thunder above, it's long been one of my favourite cultural venues. Familiarity with the place has never diminished the excitement of walking through the spray paint tang of Leake Street and into the damp, gloom and mustiness of the tunnels.

Shrapnel Theatre's The Litterati follows would-be journalist Millie (Eleanor Crosswell) as she hunts down the eponymous group. Inspired by an article in Vice about secret London communities, she hopes to write about this secretive and quiet group that live off the grid, emerging only to participate in riots and shoplift. Sensing a scoop, she convinces them to allow her to observe them for a week, interviewing them about their lifestyle, past and philosophies.

Hattie, Millie's girlfriend, is sceptical. Millie is posh, private school educated and sheltered - in Hattie's opinion remarkably ill-suited for interaction with an underground anarchist group. First contact seems to prove her right, Millie sounds as if she's wandered away from the Henley Regatta and the members of the Litterati treat her with justified suspicion. But as they get to know each other both parties loosen up, the group regarding her with curiosity and amusement and she becoming increasing attracted to their romantic rejection of society (and also hunky anarchist warrior-poet Twix (Andy Umerah)). But is she getting in too deep?

There's an echo of Fight Club in the way playwright Isla van Tricht sketches out The Litterati. As Millie quickly discovers, freedom to do what thou wilt is intensely seductive, enjoying the liberation of shedding the bondage of corrupt society and scraping a living from the margins. Granted, there's no croissants and Prosecco on the margins, but giving up trivial luxuries is a fair trade for absolute freedom, right? 

Millie is used to build an increasing sense of cultural tourism, leaving me recalling Pulp's Common People - "everybody hates a tourist / who thinks it's all such a laugh". Van Tricht is quick to point out that the members of the Litterati are there by necessity more than choice, making Millie's Rose-wine wielding intrusion a little insulting. The best of this is when her plea that she has "nowhere to go" is angrily rejected by group leader Dux (Sarel Rose), who rightly points out that there must be friends or family whose sofas she can stay on. It's a timely reminder, especially pointed on a freezing January night, that there are people who really do have nowhere to go.

The themes of righteous civil disobedience, the inability of the middle class to truly grasp desperation and philosophies of social power and dismantling authority are all extremely relevant. But, unfortunately, as a piece of drama this falls somewhat short.

Much of this is that this group of dangerous revolutionaries consists of just people who spend their days getting stoned and reading books. It's pointed out that things were more once way exciting, but that just begs the question of why not set the play then. In practice, the group feels like a pretty straightforward group of squatters, the idea of them being something more stretching to one of them reading a bit of Foucault. If the idea is that they're worthy of attention for being literate squatter anarchists, that just feels a teensy bit insulting to their real world equivalents.

On top of all that, any narrative where a gay woman is turned straight after spending a couple of days with a buff dude leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Okay sure, it must sometimes happen and perhaps this particular example is grounded in the personal experiences of the author or performer - but it's a seriously regressive narrative element in a play that otherwise has a strong progressive bent to it.

There's a decent idea of the core of The Litterati, but this production needs some refining to really make the most of it. I deeply dig the criticism of cultural tourism and the way dabbles in the philosophy of resisting authoritarian power structures but it's hamstrung by a limited scale and a smattering of iffy narrative decisions. A shame.

★★

The Litterati is at Vaults Festival until 29 January. Tickets here.

Friday, January 29, 2016

'Underground' at the Vault Festival, 28th January 2016

Friday, January 29, 2016 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

When I first arrived in London, sparkly eyed, bushy tailed and fresh faced, I thought of the the tube was impossibly romantic. The very names of stations were pregnant with possibility; after all who knew what wonders took place like at mysteriously named places like Seven Sisters, Temple or Elephant and Castle? 

On top of that is the pleasant, reassuring clunkiness of the thing; all snapping doors, robo-voiced announcements and that whoosh of ozone-tinged air as a train rushes out from the inky blackness beyond the platform.

A week of commuting on the Circle Line soon got rid of that sense of wonder; it's difficult summon that sense of metropolitan grandeur when you're desperately trying to maneuver your face out of a sweaty banker's armpit.

Isla van Tricht's Underground sets out to restore that mystery, exploring the tubeas a place hermetically sealed away from the outside world, where human relationships twist and warp, time stretches and the world becomes just a little softer.

Set in a faraway future where TFL have resolved their dispute with the drivers and the night tube is up and running, the play is set somewhere on the Northern Line near Kennington, where Claire (Bebe Sanders) and James (Michael Jinks) are returning from a reasonably successful online date.

Then the train judders to a halt. Minutes pass with no explanation, until an apologetic announcement that the train has broken down and maintenance staff are being dispatched. Claire and James are stuck underground, their only company each other and an obliviously snoozing fellow passenger (Adrian Wheeler). As minutes turn into hours, the two conversationally dance around one another, mutual attraction blooming. But the longer they stay here, the more surreal the tannoy announcements get. Just how long will they be trapped?

Modest, modern and perceptive, van Tricht displays a firm grasp of both contemporary relationships and the Greater London public transport network. As the play unfolds, the two pleasingly dovetail together. Underground's dating world is one of Tindr and Happn, each indispensible to the urban dater. Spotting someone you like the look of in a bar and striking up a conversation is a bit passe these days - far better to coolly sit in judgment behind your smartphone and swipe left and right.

Similarly, the tube network treats human beings as bytes to be efficiently shuffled down a series of pipes to their destinations. Once you press your Oyster card through the barrier, you become a blip on TFL's system, tracked around the network. The two systems share a preoccupation with cleanly digitally processing analogue humanity. So, by trapping a couple together in this system, Underground gently critiques the sleek ease of modern dating by creating a situation in which no-one can casually swipe someone into the abyss.

While this all rumbles away in the background, the foreground is taken up with a very well-written romance. From moment one, Wheeler and Sanders demonstrate an enviable romantic chemistry. Wheeler accentuates awkwardness and fake bravado, unsure of how much of himself to reveal, while Sanders hides behind a sarcastic and spikiness. Both characters are eminently likeable and believable - whether they're casually smoking outside a crowded bar or ravenously ripping each other's clothes off in an erotic muddle.

Frankly it's straightforwardly nice to see an on-stage romance that works. Mutual attraction is a difficult thing to convey in performance and writing without the billowing whiff of cheese, so full credit to all involved. 

Matters are helped by the smart decision to exploit the atmosphere in the Leake Street tunnels. We're ensconced underneath Waterloo station and the ceiling is periodically shaken by the doomy knocking of trains overhead. I've seen a lot of shows here and this can be distracting, but in Underground it creates a distinctly subterranean London Underground vibe that'd be hard to create anywhere else.

The only place things come a little unstuck are the more surreal segues. Sleep-deprived and disorientated, the tannoy announcements descend into a mix of free-wheeling poetry and snatches of overheard conversations. The sleeping man in the corner of the train proves to be an agitator of the fourth wall, adding a weird metafictional element to proceedings. I don't think Underground needs these distractions, at any rate, neither I nor my plus one could work out what they were trying to communicate.

At just an hour long, Underground is an eminently breezy experience, speckled with beautifully observed and played fragments of human interaction. It's got obvious heart, brains to back it up and captures that elusive, easily forgotten thrill of romance underground.

Swipe right.

★★★★

Underground is at Vault Festival:

Performances: 27th - 31st January 2016

Wednesday - Sunday, 18.00, + Saturday matinee, 14.30

Tickets: £12

For full programme and ticket information, visit vaultfestival.com