‘The whole stinkin’ commercial world insults us and we don’t care a damn. It’s our own bloody fault. We want third rate – we got it!’
Beatie’s invective in Arnold Wesker’s seminal 50s play Roots sounds painfully relevant in Diyan Zora’s neatly understated revival.
The lethargy and apathy that enmesh the struggling lives of Wesker’s working class citizens in rural Norfolk is thrown into sharp relief by a radiant performance from Morfydd Clark, star of The Rings of Power, as Beatie, a woman who boldly questions the limitations of her post WWII world.
The second in a trilogy of plays, Roots revolves around the views of socialist Ronnie, Beatie’s Jewish, London-based boyfriend, who never makes an appearance in the rural community he professes to admire, not even to attend the welcome party in his honour.
It is her voice – the discovery of it - and the dynamic of her fractious relationship with her mother, Mrs Bryant [Sophie Stanton – excellent] that drives the realist action. Appropriately, the distinctive regional speech patterns of Beatie’s family are a key feature.
Everyday actions like baking a cake, taking a bath in a metal tub punctuate the dialogue though the decision to have actors depositing basic props beyond the circumference of Naomi Dawson’s sparse set to convey the universality of humdrum experience is a tad crass.
While Beatie specifically takes aim at limited educational aspirations, it’s a canny move to stage the play in counterpoint to John Osborne’s groundbreaking Look Back in Anger where the fury is mediated via crumbling alpha male Jimmy Porter and his self-pitying rants: female versus male anger; city disenfranchisement versus disintegrating rural employment.
Costumes are subtly period to invite contemporary parallels. Lighting switches from honey hues to cold and ghostly. Zora has streamlined some of the pauses and faltering pacing but no layers in meaning are lost in exchanges.
Parroting political views can momentarily satisfy, but Ronnie is not Beatie’s salvation. Absorbing culture, as Beatie does, when she listens to Georg Bizet’s L’Arlesienne can be liberating - there’s an exquisite scene in which Clark part kazachoks round the stage. But it’s thinking for ourselves that proffers the glimmer of hope. What message could be more resonant?
4/5 stars
First staged in 1956, John Osborne’s landmark Look Back in Anger is the definitive ‘kitchen sink’ drama and takes its rightful place in rep alongside Roots in the Almeida’s Angry and Young Season.
Its charismatic protagonist, Jimmy Porter, verbally and incessantly attacks the oppressive class system of post-war Britain; a system that is failing its younger generation through poor social and economic planning.
The fact that his upper-class wife is his main target makes the misogyny feel doubly alienating given terms like coercive control and gaslighting are now everyday. Director Atri Banerjee evokes the ripple effects of Greek tragedy in his stylised production with mixed results.
It opens with visual and physical flair: Jimmy stares into the abyss – the staging of an inner revolve with a sinking surface - then stalks the space under blood-red lighting accompanied by a jumbled jazzy soundtrack.
His nihilism is established before his rants kick in. Billy Howle is exceptional as Jimmy: pent up, he wipes his lips repeatedly, twitches; at other times he gazes out at the audience, achingly vulnerable, the memories ever-present of his childhood days spent by his dying father’s beside.
Iwan Davies as the couple’s Welsh flatmate Cliff is impressively credible in the tricky role of peace-keeper. The resigned silences of Alison [Ellora Torchia] as she irons are well-played with some nuanced movement suggesting her depth of emotions and the complexities of their dynamic.
When Helena [Morfydd Clark] seduces Jimmy after encouraging Alison to leave, more misogyny is side-stepped via some seductive choreography. The blend of Jimmy’s complaining and cruelty together with the women’s preoccupation over his welfare was never palatable and this production struggles to redress that issue.
As in Roots, costumes are subtly period though lighting is markedly portentous.
The play’s potential contemporary relevance remains under-explored. Post Brexit, Jimmy’s begrudging nostalgia, even his acknowledgement of the loss felt by Alison’s ‘daddy’ for his colonial past in India, invites a stronger steer.
Jimmy’s fierce intellect honed in a third-rate ‘white tile’ university, leading to his drifter choice to manage a sweet-stall rings relevant alarm bells. Dust pours down on the doomed couple in their concluding embrace. The production is strong on atmosphere but the self-conscious push against 'kitchen sink' realism means it does not achieve its tragic potential.
3/5 stars
The Almeida's Young and Angry season runs until November 23.
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