Sacha Dhawan, paul Chequer and Michelle Terry confront the problems of immigration to the U.K. in Richard Bean's play within a play.
A National Theater presentation of a play in two acts by Richard Bean. Directed by Nicholas Hytner.
Norfolk Danny, Carlo, Aaron, Mushi - Sacha Dhawan
Camille, Mary, Black Ruth, Deborah - Michelle Terry
Sanya, Ida - Sophie Stanton
Chief Rabbi, Attar, Imam - Aaron Neil
Bishop of London, National Front Speaker - David Verrey
Philippa - Olivia Colman
Here's a recipe: Take the thorny subject of British immigration, add consciously pointed stereotyping and time-shifts from Caryl Churchill's "Cloud Nine," pour into the structure of Thornton Wilder's "Our Town" and cook for three hours --presto, it's "England People Very Nice." Richard Bean's iconoclastic, century-hopping cartoon of a play is big, bold and unremittingly boisterous. But the unsubtle tenor of its no-expletive-deleted satire will infuriate as many as it amuses.
Bean uses the Wilder-esque framing device of actors being marshaled together on stage, in this case a cast of 22 in the end-of-her-tether control of director Philippa (Olivia Colman). These characters, however, aren't actors, they're a wildly diverse group of refugees and asylum seekers. And in the six months they've been held, they've devised a theater piece.
That explains the consciously unsophisticated tone of almost everything that follows in the play-within-a-play about British immigration across four centuries.
The setting is London's East End area of Bethnal Green. In the 17th century, French protestant Huguenots fled here and introduced silk weaving, much to the fury of local Irish Catholics. That cycle of arrival, resentment and possible partial reconciliation is repeated down through the centuries with incoming Jews, then Bangladeshis.
None of this, however, is handled with the earnest seriousness such a synopsis might suggest. A jocose, almost Monty Python-esque tone is established from the start as jaunty, fast-moving cartoon animations flash across the wooden back wall of Mark Thompson's makeshift-style set.
Actors, almost all playing up to six roles apiece, race on and off in agit-prop recreations of political and social history. Many of them, including anarchist Jews pelting Orthodox Jews with bacon sandwiches outside the synagogue on Yom Kippur, are drawn from fact. The style is not unlike a finessed Reduced Shakespeare Company albeit with a seriously bigger budget.
Linking the centuries are successive generations of a lovestruck duo from across the racial divide, played with gusto and touching precision by Sacha Dhawan and Michelle Terry. The hope engendered by their longed-for interracial marriage is clearly at the heart of the play.
Controversially, in the slightly more considered second half, the self-imposed separatism of Muslim groups in the post-9/11 world is seen as the problem not the solution.
Political correctness is absolutely nowhere to be seen. The script sports uproariously funny lines inducing gales of guilty laughter. In isolation, their trading in ethnic and faith stereotypes renders most of them unquotable. Even the printable ones -- "Irish and Jewish, that's the worst mix. You end up with a family of pissed-up burglars run by a clever accountant" -- don't work in isolation because what makes them funny in performance is the cumulative sense of the absurdity of all stereotyping.
In other words, Bean is operating on equal-opportunity offensiveness. Facing each wave of immigrants in each century, Sophie Stanton's gloriously brash, salt-of-the-earth, permanent Cockney barmaid gets a bigger and bigger laugh every time she's suddenly picked out in Neil Austin's lighting design, propping up her bar and loudly proclaiming "Fucking..." -- fill in the abusive term for whichever despised new group has moved in.
However, pointing up the repetitive nature of intolerance does make the show itself repetitive, a fact not lost on director Nicholas Hytner, who whips everything along as smartly as possible.
Wisely, Hytner and designer Thompson avoid throwing in special effects, sticking instead to a simple visual aesthetic that makes sense of the notion this is supposedly being staged by non-professionals. That extends to Grant Olding's score, which opts for comic versions of folk songs, not emotionally controlling underscoring.
Yet for all the skill of the broad-brushstroke presentation, the evening feels long, largely because the breadth of the canvas militates against engrossing detail. Argument is mostly replaced by assertion, and the cross-century love story, set up as comedy, is designed to carry more weight than the writing manages to convey.
The show it most resembles is Leonard Bernstein's "Candide," another grand-scale enterprise awash with big ideas, great moments and dodgy dramaturgy. "England People Very Nice" has far less music but packs a lot more punch. It will divide audiences as much as local critics. But with a top price of £30, and, thanks to the National's Travelex sponsorship deal, 50% of tickets at just £10, it looks like it will be a big hit.
Sets and costumes, Mark Thompson; lighting, Neil Austin; original music, Grant Olding; sound, John Leonard; animation, Pete Bishop; choreography, Scarlett Mackmin; fight direction, Terry King; production stage manager, Nik Haffenden. Opened, reviewed Feb. 11, 2009. Running time: 2 HOURS, 55 MIN.
With: Philip Arditti, Jamie Beamish, Paul Chequer, Rudi Dharmalingam, Hasina Haque, Tony Jayawardena, Trevor Laird, Elliot Levey, Siobhan McSweeney, Neet Mohan, Sophia Nomvete, Daniel Poyser, Claire Prempeh, Fred Ridgeway, Avin Shah, Harvey Virdi.
Contact David Benedict at
benedictdavid@mac.com
Date in print: Fri., Feb. 13, 2009