Weird experiments in stone and glass clutter the South Bank opposite the Tower of London. The near-spherical City Hall looks like a speeding squash ball photographed at the moment of impact with a racquet. Around it stretches an acre of sloping flagstones, ideal for freestyle biking and skateboarding. (Sure enough, both activities are vigorously suppressed by patrols of scowling guards.) Nearby, the Scoop is a roofless amphitheatre fashioned from a crater of layered granite. It’s an eerie and compelling sight, as if a divine whirlwind had ripped deep spirals out of a barren moonscape to produce a huge grooved funnel. As I took my place on a freezing seat, I sensed that the artificiality of the space seems to work against the warmth and intimacy it’s supposed to generate.
The theatre hosts free performances of Brecht’s The Mother until 4 September. This 1932 drama sketches out life in Russia during the 15 years leading up to the revolution. The central character, Pelegea, is a turnip-boiling peasant who joins the communists when her son gets into trouble for organising a strike. True to form, Brecht questions everyone’s assumptions but his own. He portrays the revolutionaries as brave and brilliant pioneers intent on saving the world from a gang of dimwitted capitalist throwbacks. Every gesture is highly simplistic. A smug conservative sneers that ignorance is better than education. A strike-breaking cook waves his machete around angrily. The Church is represented by sulky black-clad mystics who, for reasons not explained, speak in Welsh accents.
This is a listless, middle-of-the-road production with one very peculiar detail: the action is enlivened by bursts of song played by a Ukrainian serf with a James Blunt haircut and an electric guitar. Believe it or not the show is proving popular. And I found it oddly heartening to see so many happy, well-dressed young Londoners — themselves a tribute to the victory of Marxism’s enemies — applauding these extinct intellectual battles. Marxism used to be the salvation of humanity. Now it’s just a fashion accessory.
Part of its appeal lay in the seductive conclusions it reached about philosophy and economics. People are good, it argued, and money is bad. Wrong both times, as it turned out. People are both good and bad. And money is neither. Money is human appetite given flexible expression. And when the Marxists set up an anti-money society that didn’t abolish money, they created a self-deception that eventually forced every citizen to become a cheat and a hypocrite. These are matters of historical record the audience and the producers of this bizarre re-enactment seem oblivious to. The show’s final note was surreal.
The performers, who call themselves Steam Industry Free Theatre, informed us they’ve uncovered a flaw in their business plan (the clue’s in the title), and after taking their bows they passed round a collection bucket. Strange that. A play campaigning to terminate capital ended with a request for more capital to continue the anti-capital campaign. Self-awareness was never one of Marxism’s strong suits.
Blue Surge by Rebecca Gilman is an examination of prostitution in America. A must-see for feminists, the play argues that prostitution is a perfectly good job for uneducated women seeking danger, excitement, power and money. Teenage hooker Sandy (nicely played by Clare Latham) explains that the men who use brothels are mostly fat, ugly, poor, single and young. They tend to favour the cheapest option, hand relief, or ‘a massage with a happy ending’, as it’s known. And their sexual frustration guarantees that the cracker goes off with very little effort. Two minutes work, $40 banked. After a busy week, a prostitute’s wallet is bulging. It’s more hygienic than nursing and a lot better paid.
The storyline is activated when Sandy is busted by Curt, an earnest cop with relationship problems. Curt takes a shine to Sandy but insists that she gives up her career first, which she declines to do. Hard-bitten Sandy is contrasted with flighty, warm-hearted Heather (played with gleeful relish by Kelly Burke), who knocks back whisky all day long and hasn’t the guile to conceal her profession from an undercover cop. Her innocent flakiness is more appealing than Sandy’s watchful, calculating intelligence. And Curt’s fellow policeman Doug, an anal-sex addict, makes Curt seem dry and dour by contrast. Doug is joyously portrayed by Alexander Guiney as a nerdy, needy, hyperactive pervert.
The show is absorbing rather than gripping and its interest lies less in its dramatic content than in its exploration of documentary realism. Even that realism can be a bit pushy. Within two minutes of curtain-up, half the cast are stark naked. And the script is replete with graphic references to the pleasures available at your local massage parlour. Not a show for a first date.
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