Down and Out in Paris and London is a brilliant specimen from a disreputable branch of writing: the chav safari, the underclass minibreak, the sojourn on the scrapheap that inspires a literary monument. Orwell’s first book was turned down by Faber boss T.S. Eliot, who received the script under its original title, Confessions of a Dishwasher. New Diorama’s dramatisation brilliantly captures the raffish sleaziness of Paris in the 1920s. Orwell’s crew of thieves, parasites and drifters come across as comradely and charming in this magnificently squalid setting. The austere lighting and the ingenious stage effects are done with tremendous economy. There are flashes of bleak humour too. Orwell’s anvil-faced landlady dismisses his complaints about bedbugs claiming that the insects’ choice of habitat proves the desirability of her establishment.
The show takes a strange turn when it moves to London. Orwell’s testimony is dropped and instead we’re treated to an adaptation of Polly Toynbee’s memoir Hard Work, which chronicles her time living as a jobseeker in the capital. In the play Toynbee stages her proletarian stunt in Tower Hamlets (my current patch), whose council likes to exaggerate its penury in order to win larger grants from Whitehall. Tower Hamlets is pretty affluent, and conspicuously so in many neighbourhoods, but Toynbee seems convinced she’s entering a pit of crime, disease and starvation. Having thrown herself on the mercy of her beloved welfare state, she immediately starts to criticise the calibre of its hospitality. She’s miffed that her free council flat hasn’t been furnished in advance of her arrival. Offered a loan to buy some basic amenities, she’s appalled at the meagreness of the décor budget: £300. She’s summoned to a job interview in Holloway, three miles away, but struggles to find the bus fare from her dole money.
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