Peter Viney's Blog

People Like Us
By Julie Burchill and Jane Robins

Directed by Ben De Wynter
Designed by Holly Best

Union Theatre, Southwark, London
Friday 19th October 2018

CAST:
Ralph – Kamaal Hussain
Clemence – Marine Andre
Stacey – Gemma-Germaine
Frances – Sarah Toogood
Will – Paul Giddings

L to R: Will (Paul Giddings), Frances (Sarah Toogood), Ralph (Kamaal Hussein), Clemence (Marine Andre), Stacey (Gemma-Germaine).

It’s an odd theatre system. You can’t get your tickets till 6.30, an hour before it starts (cutting right across pre-theatre eating time). When you do, you’re assigned a numbered plastic disc. There are ten number 1, ten number 2, ten number 3 etc. At 7.20 you can enter in groups of ten and choose an unreserved seat. We got a 1.

We turned to Julie Burchill’s columns in newspapers first for years, from New Musical Express to The Sunday Times  to The Guardian which is why we booked it. The vehemence of negative reviews before we even get to the theatre, is astonishing … I haven’t seen that many one star reviews before. The Stage is even appalled to find the programme note is by her fellow controversial ex-left winger, Rod Liddle.

… a supposedly raunchy political comedy set in a supposedly vivacious London book group. If that premise doesn’t immediately make you wince, then try this for size: it’s got a programme note by Rod Liddle.

I also read Rod Liddle’s column every Sunday. There is no question that the opinions … pro-Brexit, anti-liberal elite – are set to infuriate the media elite. Maybe Right-On Southwark was not the most suitable location for a production.

While the play is about reactions to Brexiteers from the liberal elite, the rear of the programme states fairly “95% of people working in the arts voted Remain” and Sarah Toogood’s programme bio states “Sarah is a Remainer!” The point about being an actor is you play a character and show the character’s opinions, not your own, Point well-made in the programme.

I’d better state that I’m a fervent Remainer, fond of Southwark, and believe we should have a second referendum, because in two years the balance between older voters who have migrated to the voting booth in the sky, and the newly-enfranchised who have become eighteen may well have eliminated that very slender difference (51.89% versus 48.11%) on a 72% turnout, which the Brexiteers laughingly call “an overwhelming majority.”  I believe it was the aforementioned Rod Liddle (though a Brexiteer) who pointed this out in The Sunday Times. I also believe that the Conservatives were mad not to set a “two thirds for a major Constitutional change” rule, which sensible countries embrace. I’ll add that almost every place you’d want to live in voted Remain. Let’s include Julie Burchill’s home town (Bristol 61.7% Remain) and her place of residence (Brighton. 68.6% Remain) and Southwark where the play is staged (72.8% Remain). In the play “Remainers” are said to be London and Scotland only. Really? Cardiff – 60% Remain, Belfast 55.8% Remain, Liverpool 58.2% Remain, Manchester 60.4% Remain, Warwick 58.8% Remain, Cambridge 73.8% Remain, Newcastle 50.7% Remain, York 58% Remain,  Oxford 70.3% Remain.) Yet Burchill and Robins go for attacking an Oxford educated (three of the characters) Metropolitan elite in the South of England. Not so. Just look back. And not all 48.11% of us were educated in Oxford.

My area, the Bournemouth / Poole conurbation voted Leave, which astonished me as we have two large fast-growing universities, were for years the second largest English Language Teaching centre (after London) and have a Cross-Channel Port. However, it’s a large retirement area too. So, like most of the theatre critics, I’m starting out strongly “on the other side.” The next day we came home via Waterloo right after the “People’s Vote” March. Virtually all young people. It is their future.

Clemence (Marine Andre), Will (Paul Giddings), Ralph (Kamaal Hussein)

The play is about a book group in Islington (whose local MP is Jeremy Corbyn, not that they mention it). The group is run by Ralph, who left his wife and daughters for French girl, Clemence. Other members are Stacey, an old flame, and Frances a Lesbian Latin teacher from Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire. Then there’s would be novelist, Will, who like Ralph and Stacey attended “Oxford.” Let’s demonize Oxford, though having written for OUP for decades, I see the point 🙂 Ralph, Clemence and Will are Remainers. Stacey and Frances are Leavers. Friendship dies in the conflict over Brexit.

Frances (Sarah Toogood), Stacey (Gemma-Germaine), Will (Paul Giddings), 

During the play, people may freeze while one walks forward and addresses the audience.

The arguments on both sides are cliche-riddled.What’s worse too many of them are thought out “clever remarks” and while several got the desired laughs, you can only get away with this in dialogue if you are Oscar Wilde. Kamaal Hussein gives us a rich interpretation of Ralph, but I don’t know how he managed to spout the cliched stuff he had to spout. Will (Paul Giddings) shone as the mild novelist and Lycra clad cyclist, partly because he had a lot of reactive acting so was not so burdened by the dialogue. He managed to get to the audience so much that he got two resounding “Aah!s” of sympathy when our Brexiteers were nasty to him, after he’d explained they were to be expelled from the Book Club..

Frances (Sarah Toogood), Will (Paul Giddings), Stacey (Gemma-Germaine)

Our Brexiteers are Stacey and Frances, the women (let’s ignore the fact that 80% of females under 24 and 54% of females under 49 voted Remain). There are some valid points. Stacey hates seeing little Moslem girls aged 7 in hijabs and long dresses whose ‘little bodies will never feel the sun.’ Frances notes that at her health club, Moslem men sit in the jacuzzi ogling women in bathing suits. They are instantly accused of rabid Islamophobia by right-on Clemence, but we know they’re simply stating what they saw, and we believe them. The point the writers might have tackled is different. I hear people complain about Russian oligarchs, Albanian crime syndicates and isolationist extremist Pakistanis. OK, none of these groups are from the EU. Nothing to do with Europe. I think many Leavers were “anti-foreign” regardless of origin.

Frances is the Lesbian Latin teacher from Hebden Bridge, and seems to be there to represent the Northern working class. Really? Latin teacher? Hebden Bridge? “The best small market town in Britain”?  I hope the writers saw the irony here. It reminded me of Northern friends who claimed to be “working class.” The one whose dad was a “lorry driver” owned several trucks. The “milkman dad” one owned a dairy and the “nurse” one’s mum was matron of a 200 bed care home. We have different definitions in the South. It was a sparky performance from Sarah Toogood, and she remained likeable. She was the drunk in the group.

Stacey was the sexy one with a past with Ralph. She was tall, blonde. She was the one who got really aggressive too. The physical fight at the end worked, and that was hard to achieve. Again, a sparky performance.

It ends in tears: Will (Paul Giddings), Stacey (Gemma-Germaine), Clemence (Marine Andre), Ralph (Kamaal Hussein).

I had serious problems with Clemence. The French accent and intonation borders on incomprehensible. Clemence is fluent in English far beyond the abilities of most Native Speakers. She can say I’ve been pondering these misgivings, bear with me and For those being born and those yet to be born and underneath the carapace of culture, but she does not know the word stimulating and thinks Exactemente! Is English. Sorry, this is abysmal script writing. I spent 45 years teaching and writing about English as a Foreign Language, and toured France, Belgium and Switzerland many times, speaking to French-speaking teachers of English. Believe me, no one with Clemence’s level of fluency, grammar, vocabulary, and literary quotation has retained such appalling intonation and pronunciation. Yes, even at her Ph.D level of English, a definite French accent often remains, but not at the level of Johnny Onion-Seller with his striped jersey and beret of the 1950s, ‘Allo ‘Allo, or Inspector Clouseau on an inarticulate day. I see the actor, Marine Andre, has studied music to a high level, which makes it vastly more unlikely. A musical ear and good intonation in a foreign language go together.

I know what has happened. We once had an American English course for Macmillan Education recorded in New York. One character was supposed to be English. When we got the tapes, I was in shock. The English character sounded like a Hollywood butler with sinusitis in 1935. I said ‘Why did you get an American actor to do a daft stage Englishman?’ I discovered the actor WAS English and had spent twenty years specializing in doing English characters in the USA. So he had become an absurdly exaggerated Englishman on recordings because that’s what Americans expected. This is what Marine Andre is giving us. OTT stage French. It would work if ANY of the writing showed French errors or problems in English, but it doesn’t. (And the good news was Macmillan re-recorded all those lines in our course in London, and cut and pasted them in). It’s a pity, her physical acting was good – body language, expressions, movement.

In the end, the most cogent pro-Brexit arguments come in Tim Parks programme essay. Basically, the EU doesn’t work and presides over staggering levels of unemployment in Spain, Italy and Greece. Add that the Northern countries are unsympathetic to the Mediterranean countries immigration problems. I nod my head to some of this, and a friend suggested “Let’s tell Europe we’ll stay on condition they throw Luxembourg out.” Good idea. Dodgy bankers and copyright infringers on music. Also I’ve watched Remainers shift to Leave in reaction to the odious Mr Juncker. The tragedy, which should be mentioned, is that 48.11% of the voting public find themselves abandoned by BOTH major political parties.

BUT the country that has gained most is the UK. Bright, ambitious, well-educated people (who have studied English for seven years) from Europe have flocked to Britain. There is a strong case that we have leached Poland of the cream of educated people. In a couple of days I’ve spoken with Polish bank clerks, a Polish train guard, Rumanian and Hungarian nurses, Portuguese and Spanish care workers, a French hotel reception clerk, a Greek restaurant server, and London has French, Spanish and Italian people working everywhere. We are greatly enriched by their presence. With an ageing population, we rely on European workers in the NHS and for care homes. We’re the lucky ones. I’d hate it if my kids had had to move to Rumania or Portugal just to get work. If you live in the British rust belt towns, you feel they’re taking your jobs (and vote Leave) but you’d have to move to get the jobs.

OVERALL

I couldn’t take the cliches on both sides of the argument. The dialogue is stiff, and the characters largely two-dimensional. I thought it a good idea to do a play on the theme, and interesting to present arguments so violent that end up splitting up friends. No one I know has been THAT dramatic over the Brexit divide. Pro-Brexit and anti-liberal elite points are not a problem. People have those views.

In the end it’s the dialogue that leads me to agree with the one star reviews. My companion enjoyed it and reckoned three stars, picking out the interpretation of Frances and of Will as particularly good,  and she’s usually harsher than me. She also liked the characters and hoped for a post-Brexit sequel, if it ever happens.

I wasn’t bored. I felt highly critical of it as drama though, and am a definite ‘one star. However, re-reading this review, the fact that I bothered to look up so many statistics while writing it, indicates that it got me thinking, even if it was negative.

I’m not sorry I went. We’ll split the difference and give it two stars.

TWO STARS **

PROGRAMME

£2.50, three long essays, complimentary if you’d pre-booked. Vastly better than the Young Vic’s half page on Notting Hill last week. Excellent.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID … Oh, dear!

four star

Jonathan Baz, My Theatre Mates ****

This is unquestionably a courageous, partisan show for the Union to stage – and there is as much thought put into the production as there is heart, with the programme alone containing more than six pages of essay and comment on Brexit. And if ever there was an example of fortune favouring the brave then this is it: the show has sold out for its entire run and deservedly so.

three star
Zoe Kemp, View From The Cheap Seat ***

It’s witty, bitchy and very dry. The story of how class will always divide us, and how the referendum made that line blood red. As a remain voter, who is now just about sick of Brexit and wants to crack on with it, there was much to enjoy, but if you are still bashing out twitter statuses about a second referendum, then you will feel very uncomfortable.

two star

Henry Hitchings, Evening Standard **

It’s billed as a riposte to what they regard as the ‘cultural totalitarianism’ of the arts world. Aspiring to offer an alternative to theatre’s usual anti-Brexit sentiments, they’ve created a play that’s sour rather than refreshing. While there are a few keen satirical barbs, it’s static without being claustrophobic and bloodless despite straining to be vicious. Inconveniently, all the characters are loathsome. Worse, a lot of their riffs sound like offcuts from a cantankerous newspaper column. 

Ann Treneman, The Times **

This may not be a play about Brexit at all, just a gloat with dialogue.

one star
Domenic Cavendish, Telegraph *

Theatres should always try to fling open their doors to dissenting voices, testing every liberal assumption going, and I groan at the tedious Remoaning Cleggs and Campbells of this world as much as anyone. But only the most easily pleased Brexiteer would derive much warming comedic cheer – or food for thought – from the woefully half-baked “drawing-room drama” that ensues. 

Fergus Morgan, The Stage *

This is old-fashioned, self-absorbed, self-congratulatory entertainment, whichever way you voted. Pity the poor actors, all of whom struggle in Ben De Wynter’s awkwardly staged, dinner-party production. Pointlessly unhelpful. Painfully partisan. Uniquely awful. Waffle so reductive it might have been spluttered out by Boris Johnson. It would be infuriating if it wasn’t so hilariously bad.

Christine Lago, Everything Theatre *

A poorly written play that presents bigotry where it could have showcased valid arguments.